


Beneath the Skin

by LynyrdLionheart



Category: Guild Hunter - Nalini Singh, The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, Klaroline AU based off the Guild Hunter series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-27
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-06 08:58:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 57,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4215639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LynyrdLionheart/pseuds/LynyrdLionheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“He could still remember those sunsets if he tried hard enough.  And here it was, mirrored in a young angel’s wings.”  Klaus is an Archangel whose pursuit of power is unmatched.  Caroline is the only person that might be able to save his sanity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dark Water

**Author's Note:**

> So, yeah… I’m starting a new story! This one is based off of the lore from Nalini Singh’s Guild Hunters series. So basically, it’s angel!Klaroline. Story title and chapter titles come from Of Monsters and Men, a very good band.

Inky blackness, as dark as the furthest depths of the ocean.  Klaus had once swam there, pulled his wings in tight to his body, and dove, just to see how far he could go.  He had seen the monsters that mortals only imagined existed, and they had run from him.

                But the dark didn’t last long.  It was a gradual gradient, inky black to murky blue that became crystalline, until it reached the sky with an explosion of red and orange and gold and it reminded him of watching sunsets in the Refuge.  So many eons had passed that his memory was very nearly gone, but he could still remember those sunsets.

                And here it was, mirrored in a young angel’s wings.

                “It’s an honor, Archangel.”

Her head was bowed in supplication, showing that she had been trained well by Lexie in Refuge.  She folds her wings back neatly, and Klaus’ fists clench.  He has no interest in a child new from the Refuge, only in those _wings_.

                “Niklaus,” Elijah says, his voice wary; Elijah is ever wary around him these days, as all the other Archangels are.  As they should be.  “This is Caroline.  She has come here to be one of Katerina’s ladies.”

                This news doesn’t surprise Klaus.  Elijah’s consort is known for her great appreciation of beauty, and Caroline’s wings are works of art.  Now that they’ve been folded back, he can see that the girl herself is lovely as well, though innocent in a way that Katerina never was.  Wide blue eyes watch him with something almost like awe, while blonde curls fall down her back.  He notes all this with the jaded eye of one that has seen much beauty.

                Caroline is indeed pretty, but he’s seen more attractive.

                Except for those wings.

                Elijah nods at the girl, and she curtsies prettily and leaves once more to join Katerina and the other ladies, an Klaus is once again afforded the view of her wings, with their contrasting colors, and he wonders if he would feel the ocean in those feathers, were he to run his fingers through them.

                “I would have her,” he says to Elijah after a moment. 

                “She is little more than a child,” Elijah replies, with that ever wary gaze.  It amuses Klaus and makes his lips quirk

                “She is grown enough that Lexie’s nurturing presence is no longer needed,” he replies, and Elijah scoffs at that.

                “We both know a century is hardly enough time to call one an adult, Niklaus,” Elijah shoots back, his gaze falling on the girl with consideration.  Katerina is running her fingers through the girl’s hair while speaking to another one of her ladies, this one a contemporary of Katerina’s named Rose.

                A pretty bauble for Elijah’s consort… except the girl isn’t luxuriating in Katerina’s touch as one might expect – it’s said by many that to be touched by Katerina is akin to being touched by Heavan, a foolish concept if ever Klaus had one.  But Caroline’s gaze is avid, that of someone that is listening and remembering.

                Perhaps more than a pretty bauble, then?

                “She is grown enough to make her own choices,” he says to Elijah at last, when, as though she can feel his gaze, Caroline turns toward him, those innocent blue eyes catching with his for a quick moment, when he sees her breath catch, before she turns away once more. 

                “You seek to seduce her from my court, then?” Elijah demands, not looking particularly pleased at this thought, and his stance is almost protective.  He has never seen his fellow Archangel like this before, not unless Katerina was involved.

                “It’s always better to get them when they’re fresh.  Give them time, and all of those tiresome loyalties form.”

                Klaus sips the fine wine that he and Elijah share, and then considers the girl once more.  She doesn’t look at him again, but the tension in her shoulders say that she is very much aware of his gaze on her.

                He lets out a chuckle and ignores Elijahs’ startled look.

\---

                “The Archangel Niklaus” – Caroline brushes through her mistress’ hair and contemplates her next words.  She’s new to the court, but she has already heard the stories of how displeased Katerina gets if she feels one has stepped outside their position – “he is…”

                “Intimidating?  Frightening?” Katerina’s dark eyes meet Caroline’s in the mirror above her dressing table, and a smile dances on her lips.  “Insane?”

                “It’s not my place to make such accusations,” Caroline replies, letting her lashes fall demurely, and Katerina laughs a full laugh and touches her fingers to Caroline’s wrist.

                “I didn’t bring you here just to be a bauble for my entertainment, Caroline” – when Caroline’s eyes flash up to Katerina’s, the brunette meets her gaze seriously – “I knew your mother.”

                The mention of her mother makes Caroline tense, memories rushing through her of blood and death and her wings flare.  She reminds herself that they are not shackled anymore, that they’ve grown strong in the decades since…

                “I am not my mother,” she says at last, knowing the words could get her punished, but needing her mistress to know that if she expects another Elizabeth, she will be disappointed.

                “I know” – gaze still serious, Katerina’s fingers stroke along the skin of Caroline’s hand – “that’s what I’m counting on.”

                Caroline swallows and then begins to braid the dark hair, uncertain what to say next.

                “I saw the way he watched you, and I saw the way you _didn’t_ watch him.  Niklaus covets that which he deems beautiful, and I’ve never seen wings more beautiful than yours” – Caroline freezes but briefly in her braiding, and hopes that Katerina won’t notice – “be very careful with him, Caroline.  He is not capable of love as Elijah is, as most of the other Archangels are.  He has… evolved beyond such basic needs.”

                _Everyone needs love_ , Caroline thinks, but then she pushes such fanciful thoughts away.  They are words she _wishes_ were true, but she knows they aren’t.  Her own history is proof of that, drenched in blood as it is. 

                “Beyond my wings there is nothing special about me.  His interest will pass,” Caroline says at last as she finished the braid and steps back from her mistress, keeping her head bowed.  Katerina’s touch under her chin makes her raise her head, and meet dark eyes.

                “I think you are very good at convincing others of just that, Caroline,” Katerina replies at last, and Caroline feels almost as though the other woman can see to the very soul of her.  “I think you will be a very good addition to our court.”

                “I very much hope so,” Caroline replies, and finds that, much to her surprise, she actually means the fervent words.

                Lies have always fallen much more easily from her lips, so to find herself speaking the truth is a wonderful thing.

\---

                Her thoughts are elsewhere when she makes her way to her room.  She always feels lighter somehow, when she’s been with Katerina.  Unlike others, she knows it’s not because of the brunette’s touch – though that is pleasant, and makes Caroline think it’s probably what a mother’s touch is meant to be, though she couldn’t say for certain.

                She’s never known a mother’s touch.

                No, Caroline feels lighter because of the trust Katerina seems to put in her.  She knows how the others view her – young and weak, made in her mother’s image – but Katerina sees beyond that.  It makes Caroline hope that perhaps, someday, she’ll be more than the pretty fledgling with the unusual wings.

                If she could change them, she would. Get rid of the pretty feathers and be left with nothing but plain.  They are the single extraordinary thing about her, and she wishes with all her heart she could chance that.

                _Shackles holding her in place and maddened muttering.  Feathers stripped away and promises that she would show him…_

She’s not sure how long she stands outside her door lost to memory before she feels the gaze.  Dark and heavy and she recognizes its weight, because she sat through the entire meal with it weighing upon her back.  She slowly turns around, and there he is, watching her with that dark gaze.

                The Archangel Niklaus.

                “Good evening, Little Fledgling,” he says, and he straightens from where he leans on the wall.  His prowl is like that of a wildcat, and Caroline can feel her heart thumping in her chest.  Her time spent at Refuge had kept her sheltered, but she no longer has the protection of childhood, and this man is very, _very_ dangerous.

                “Archangel,” she replies, backing into her door until the handle digs almost painfully into her back, but he doesn’t stop his prowling.  Not until he’s mere inches away from her, his gaze on the wings that flare out behind her.

                “So very lovely,” he murmurs, and his fingers reach out, pausing just before touching feather.  “May I?”

                Caroline may be young, but she is no fool.  Though he phrases it as a question, there is no request in Klaus’ words.  Here is the Archangel that everyone fears, and being so close to him makes her shiver – not in fear, but in awareness – and she curses herself a hundred kinds of fool for feeling such things.

                “Of course, m’lord,” she says, and Klaus closes the rest of the distance to her wings, burying his fingers in feathers.

                The contact sends a jolt through Caroline, an she closes her eyes to keep from screaming.  The contact makes her muscles clench, because it goes against her every instinct, and she has to breathe deeply through her nose to keep herself in the here and now.

                _Chains holding her in place, the blue sky through the open window, and if she could just reach it… her wings are weak, but she is desperate…_

“How intriguing.”

                It takes her a moment, to realize that the fingers that lift her chin are the same ones that had stroked her feathers, and then she is looking into his bright blue eyes, and they are searching her face.  She wishes she knew what answers he searched for, for then she could hide them from him.

                “What shadows are you hiding, Caroline?” he asks, and his words make her fear, because no one, not even Lexie, knows the darkest parts of her.  And this man, with his appearance of light, but his soul of dark, would only use them to hurt her.

                “I hide no shadows, m’lord,” she replies, carefully easing herself away from his grip, and twisting the handle of her door, so that it began to swing inwards.

                “Call me Klaus.  M’lord is so… _formal_.”

                “You’re an Archangel.  They’re meant to be formal.”

                The door is open enough so that she can slip through, and she does so, closing it quickly behind her.  He says nothing, though she knows he could have stopped her retreat in a second.  She rests her head on the door, and listens as his steps fade down the hall.

                He is only to be in Elijah’s territory for three days.

                Surely she can survive three days.

\---

                “You’ve been haunting my pet.”

                The smile Klaus forces onto his face is exactly that – forced – and done only out of respect to Elijah.  It is no secret that he and Katerina have never gotten along.  Their history is long and drenched with blood and betrayals that Klaus will never forgive. 

                But this is Katerina’s home, and both of them know that, for now, she is untouchable.  So she sits across from him and pours herself tea, and then her eyes drift across the room, to where Caroline sits with the other ladies-in-waiting.  Klaus finds his own gaze drawn there as well; a gaze that Caroline studiously ignores, though he can tell by the stiffening of her shoulders that she is aware of it. 

                “She is an interesting bauble,” he says after a moment.  Her wings have remained carefully folded behind her, as though that might somehow reduce his interest.  He wants to tell her that such thoughts are foolish now that he’s seen the shadows that haunt her eyes.

                Klaus hates mysteries, but he does so love to solve them. 

                “What would it take for you to give her up to me?” Klaus asks after a moment, because he only has one day left in Elijah’s territory, and Caroline has so delicately managed to avoid his presence, surrounding herself with the other ladies and evading him when evening falls.  He had thought to seduce her away from Elijah’s court with stories of his own, but such a thing is hard to achieve when he can’t get a moment alone with her.

                Katerina doesn’t immediately reply, and so Klaus’ gaze is drawn from the young angel to her Mistress, who is watching him with a calculating expression.  That has ever been Katerina; calculative to the very core.  It reminds him of why he had once allowed her in his court… and why later, he had sworn death upon her should she ever return.

                “More than even you could afford,” Katerina says at last, sipping her tea, a smirk dancing around her lips.  “She is a gem I am quite determined to keep at my side.”

                “To forge in your image?” Klaus shot back, and for some reason the thought of Caroline, who looked to be created from light despite those shadows that danced in her gaze, becoming like this calculating, cold woman makes everything within him rebel.  He knew he erred, that some of what he felt must have shown in his expression, because a cool victory entered Katerina’s eyes, setting his teeth on edge.

                Oh, but galls you, doesn’t it?” she asks, and that moment they are not Archangel and Archangle’s Consort.  No, they are Niklaus and Katerina, with millennia of blood and enmity between them, ever trying to one up the other.  “It galls you, to know that I, of all people, have a loyalty you so covet.”

                “Do you?” Klaus shoots back, reigning in his own emotion, because it wouldn’t do to give Katerina the edge, nor is losing control something he is used to.  He hasn’t allowed himself to be so affected in… well, in centuries.  “Remember, Katerina, that which I covet, I _always_ get.”

                “Or you break it,” Katerina replies, cold anger in her eyes, and now it’s Klaus’ turn to smirk in victory, because she is remembering exactly what he is capable of, and he thinks she was a fool to have ever forgotten it in the first place.

                “Or I break it,” he agrees.

                When that annoying, unexpected part of him rebels at the thought, he is certain that this time, no sign of it shows in his expression.

\---

                She was distracted when she made her way down the hall, not at all paying her surroundings the attention she usually did.  That was the only excuse she could give, for why she turns the corner without checking, and comes up short when she saw the man contemplating the door to her chambers. 

                She turns, planning on leaving once more, but his voice whips across the hall, freezing her in place.

                “I know you’re there, Fledgling.”

                She clenches her hands into fists and considers ignoring him.  Except Klaus isn’t someone you simply ignore, so she closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and turns back toward him.

                “You keep it locked,” he comments, still surveying the entrance to her room.  She takes slow steps until she’s at his side.  When he merely looks down at her, she takes another step and unlocks her door.  This time, when she swings it open, he doesn’t allow her to escape, instead sliding inside after her.

                He pauses at the threshold, and Caroline knows what he sees.

                Nothing.

                There is a divan and a small table with a spare chair, but otherwise the sitting room that they have entered into his empty.

                “It’s rather… _bare_ ,” Klaus muses, looking around.

                Caroline shrugs uncomfortably.  His tones says that it isn’t at all what he expects of Katerina’s prized bauble.  She doesn’t know how to explain it to him, that she spent her earliest years with nothing, and so trinkets mean very little to her now that she’s reached adulthood. Such things are just tiny little weights that keep her from being able to run as easily as she would like.

                Even if she did know how to put it in words, she wouldn’t explain it to _him_.

                “What do you want of me?” she asks him instead, and Klaus chuckles, a rich sound that sends prickles of awareness down her spine.  Her wings flare out at the sound, and the movement draws Klaus’ eyes to them. It makes her aware, that this is the first time he’s looked at her wings rather than her face since she saw him, and she doesn’t quite know what to do with that revelation. 

                His gaze is intent as he steps closer to her, and it takes all of Caroline’s considerable will not to back away, but she knows such a sign of intimidation would just amuse him.

                “So very beautiful.”

                “It’s rumored you have an obsession with unusual wings.”

                Caroline winces as the words fall from her lips, because she hadn’t meant to blurt the words out.  But she needed to distract him somehow, and his presence in her room set her so on edge that she lost the lies that usually fell so easily from her lips, leaving her awkward  and unsure how to react around him. 

                “They are quite correct,” Klaus replies, his voice amused, and she swears there’s laughter dancing in his eyes.  Caroline lets out a breath she didn’t realize she had been holding.  It catches again when he reaches out once more and runs his fingertips over the edge of her feathers.  He quirks his head at her stiffened muscles and hums thoughtfully.  “You dislike being touched.”

                “Wings are a sensitive thing,” Caroline replies automatically.  They are words she has echoed a hundred times, whenever anyone noticed her dislike of any sort of contact with her wings.  It wasn’t a sentiment that was entirely unheard of amongst angels, and most others weren’t usually as quick to touch each other as Klaus was.

                As though he has a right to her.

                “I am not as unfair as some would claim,” he informs her when she remains stiff and unreceptive.  He takes a step back from her and flares his own wings out.  “You can touch as well.”

                She has seen them before, of course she has.  It’s impossible to hide an angel’s wings, and with his apparent obsession with her own, she had taken the opportunity to survey his as well.  They are white, mottled through with brown.  Simple, really, but there is a sort of beauty in that simplicity, and she finds that she has reached toward them before she realizes what she’s doing.  Her fingers drift against the feathers, and the soft feel of them between her fingers has her recoiling almost immediately.

                “They’re very nice,” she says, clasping her hands in front of her, to keep from touching again.  He notices the reaction, and his answering smirk is wicked.

                “Quite plain, wouldn’t you say?” he asks, turning his head and stroking his fingers through his wing, tugging a feather that had bent out of place.  It’s one of the brown ones, and he holds it out to her.  She reaches out hesitantly an accepts it, running her fingers over the edge.  His gaze goes to hers once more, a dark, covetous look shadowing his eyes.  “Not at all like yours.”

                Caroline finds herself tucking her wings back, her fingers stilling on his feather, and Klaus lets out a regretful sigh as his view of them is reduced.

                “I have a trophy room,” he tells her, finally looking back at her eyes.  He plucks his feather from her hand and then uses it to tuck her hair behind hear ear.  Caroline swallows as his fingers drift against the sensitive skin on the shell of ear, and then trail down until they carefully tilt her chin towards him.  “You should come and see it.”

                “If m’lady ever asks me to come to your lands with her, I’ll be sure to take the opportunity.”

                It seems a safe enough thing to say, because Caroline knows that even now that she’s Elijah’s consort, Katerina has never stepped a foot in Klaus’ kingdom since she left it.  Though Klaus has never come right out and said she was unwelcome, the sentiment was there.

                “Ah, innocent Fledgling,” Klaus murmurs, and he leans downs, his lips mere inches from hers.  “Or is it willful ignorance?  We both know that I’m not asking you to visit with your mistress.”

                He leans down further, his lips brushing against hers, but not engaging in actual kiss.  Just a light brushing that sends jolts of awareness through Caroline that leave her more breathless than if he had pressed her against the wall and kissed her as…

                Well, as Caroline hasn’t been kissed before.

                She had known this was coming.  Katerina had commented on Klaus’ interest in her, had told her that he had spoken to Elijah.

                _“He will never allow you to fly free, Fledgling.  You’ll be an ornament for his court until he tires of you, and then you’ll become a trophy for his wall.”_

The thought makes Caroline’s throat grow tight.  She can all but feel the shackles closing around her wings, can feel her freedom flying away – as she had been unable to fly for so long.  A sob is caught in the back of her throat, but she refuses to show such weakness in front of Klaus, and determinedly forces the sob back and steps away from him, putting on her most polite of smiles, the one she always uses to hide her true thoughts from Katerina’s other ladies.

                “Thank-you, m’lord.  But I am loyal to my mistress.”

                Klaus’ expression closes off at her words, or perhaps it’s in response to her own expression, but he doesn’t step away from her.

                “You hardly know your mistress,” he tells her, and there is a flash of anger in his eyes before it’s replaced by a remote superiority – the eons old Archangel pitying the foolish Fledgling.

                It angers Caroline, and sharp words fall from her lips before she can stop them.

                “My loyalty is not for sale!”

                Silence reigns, and it feels like her snarl echoes in the room around them.  Caroline takes another step back, because she has heard the stories of Niklaus.  Of how old he was.  So old that…

                “You are brave, Little Fledgling.”

                She has closed her eyes, but doesn’t feel the sharp cut of the blade of fire it’s rumored the Archangel can summon with a mere thought.  She finally braves opening her eyes, only to find that Klaus is no longer in front of her.  He has moved to the small table, where she keeps a decanter of wine for visitors.  He pours a goblet and holds it out in offer.  She accepts it with number fingers, but she’s relieved to see they don’t shake.

                “I haven’t be spoken to like that in… well, if I was ever spoken to like that I’m afraid I don’t recall it,” he muses, pouring himself another goblet.  His gaze was actually perplexed as he tries to recall a memory far older than Caroline, on that has been lost to time.

                And insanity?

                She searches his expression for the sign of the insanity they say is creeping up on him, but she cannot find it.

                “Do you really believe you will never tire of Elijah’s court?” he asks, swirling the wine in his goblet contemplatively.  “For all that Katerina is filled with ambition, Elijah is staid. Reliable.  You will grow tired of his lack of intrigue.”

                “I have no interest in intrigue,” Caroline replies, and the brow he raises as he sips from his goblet tells her that her response was spouted far too quickly.

                “Now that, Little Fledgling, we both know is a lie.”

                “What interest have I for intrigue, Archangel?” she asks after taking a fortifying drink of wine.  It’s thick with a hint of fruit, Caroline’s favorite vintage. “As you like to say, I am a fledgling.  Playing games at my age will likely get me killed.”

                Klaus sips from his own wine, and sprawls on the divan, and motions for her to join him.  She hesitates a moment, but something in his eyes tells her that she’s coming close to pushing him too far on this day.

                So she perches lightly on the edge, careful not to touch him.  Klaus lets out a low noise of frustration and tugs her closer, running a finger down her arm. 

                “One might thing you fear me, Little Fledgling,” he remarks, his touch leaving heated sparks in its wake. 

                “I do,” Caroline replies, her voice little more than a whisper, but she doesn’t look away from him, nor does she move away.  She isn’t sure if it’s fear holding her in place, or desire, but she’s sure that neither bodes well for her.

                He is a man to be feared, and she is playing a dangerous game, daring to get so close to him.

                “And if I didn’t wish you to?”

                Caroline says nothing in response to the question.  Klaus’ hand has moved from her arm to trace her lips, but she’s not so foolish as to believe that he actually meant his words.  Klaus thrives on fear.  It was how his position with the Cadre was maintained; his hold of power utterly undisputed.

                One didn’t become an Archangel by being known for kindness, after all.

                Klaus finally laughs, the sound sending yet more shivers down Caroline’s spine.  It was both musical and terrifying.

                “Well, I will grant Katerina this – she didn’t bring a fool to her court.  But back to matters of loyalty.  You say your loyalty isn’t for sale, but everyone has a price, Little Fledgling.  All you need do is name yours.”

                _Safety_.

                The thought flies across her mind, but she would never say it to him.  For all that it _should_ be easy to supply, Caroline has no doubt it’s not one he is able to pay.  She could swear she can see all his dark edges and corners, each sharpened by eons of power and the insanity he flirts with, and while a life in his court might be filled with intrigue, there would never be any safety.

                “A lady to serve, where I can make my home,” she says instead, because Klaus wasn’t like Elijah.  He had no consort, and so no lady that she could call her mistress. 

                “What if I were to give _you_ the ladies instead?”

                Caroline laughs at that, the thought of a fledgling holding such a high rank in Klaus’ court far too bizarre for her to keep the laughter in.

                “You shouldn’t make promises you have no intention of keeping, Archangel.”

\---

                “You are in a foul mood.”

                Klaus says nothing as Elijah sits across from him.  He is to leave in mere hours, and his mood is soured by the knowledge that he will be leaving alone.

                “I thought you would be looking forward to returning home.  You always tell me how many more amusements your court holds.”

                Klaus just barely refrains from sighing, because of course Elijah would choose this of all days to become talkative. 

                “I do not return to my own court, but travel first to Kol’s,” he says in response, almost absent-mindedly.  His gaze was caught by wings of endless ocean and rising sun across the room.  Caroline was very determinedly not looking at him, and he tries to will her to look at him, to no avail.

                He had gone to her rooms to seduce her to his court, and instead had very nearly promised her far more than her worth.  He had made a fool of himself over a pair of pretty wings.

                “Your attempts were unsuccessful,” Elijah remarks, and there is more amusement in his eyes than Klaus has probably seen in centuries.  Katerina, it appears, has been gossiping.

                Klaus might have made a comment on that matter, but Caroline chooses that moment to finally look across the hall, her ocean gaze clashing with his own and holding for several moments before he sees her swallow and she looks away.  A reminder, that swallow, that though she has turned him away, she was by no means immune to him.  It makes him smirk, and imagine the feel of her feathers between his fingers.

                And then he sees the brown feather tucked into her braid, and he almost laughs in victory.  Game on, Little Fledgling.  After all, Klaus has lived eons, and is by no means impatient.

                He turns back to Elijah, whose own amusement has faded in the wake of his mercurial mood.

                “For now.”

_End Part I_


	2. I of the Storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is the 2nd part. This takes place 700 years after the previous part, and brings us up to the modern day.

Caroline paces her room.

                She pauses for a moment, reaching for a goblet of wine, and then turns away.  Too many memories of him, pouring her wine, lounging on her divan.

                She taps her phone on her thigh, before looking at the e-mail once more.

                It holds claims of everything she’s feared – everything the cadre has feared – since the whispers first began to reach her nearly three years previous.

                Klaus plays games with the dead.  And not the vampries; all angels create vampires.  Even Caroline, who has never particularly liked the process, has done it to remove the harmful toxins that could leave her mad from her body.  It is, in fact, one of those vampires has that sent her this e-mail.

                She had befriended Bonnie nearly five hundred years previous, and when the girl had been beaten nearly to death by the man she called husband…

                Caroline has blood on her hands, but very little of it soaks her skin directly.  Bonnie’s husband is one death that she refuses to regret.  But now Bonnie retreats from Klaus’ kingdom, and though the photos are of poor quality, Caroline has no doubt that what the other woman says is true.

                She knows what she has to do.  Her loyalty lies with Elijah, and even if it didn’t… what Klaus does could endanger them all. 

                And still, she remembers stolen kisses and the caress of his hand, and seven hundred years after meeting him for the first time, nothing is as simple as _what she has to do_.

                She hits reply on the e-mail and types out a quick reply.  With this news, there is at least one thing she knows to do.  It’s dangerous for Bonnie to remain in New Orleans, so far from Caroline’s own London home.  And isn’t it odd, in this day when nostalgia surrounds her, to think of centuries long gone, when the names were different, yet the border of Archangel Territories have never changed.

                Caroline has lived in this same country since leaving Refuge, and though the people and political structure have changed, she can still look out her window and remember what it looked like in her earliest days as Katerina’s lady-in-waiting.

                She’s come a long way, from frightened Fledgling to feared Spymistress.

                The title makes her spine stiffen, and Caroline pushes open her door.  Personal matters have no place in what she does, and Niklaus is flirting with too many lines for Caroline to simply look the other way. 

                Elijah and Katerina are together when his General, Enzo, allows her entrance into their chambers.  Elijah was heard to comment that he sometimes wondered to whom Lorenzo’s loyalties truly belonge – himself, or Caroline, though she knew that the dark eyed man’s loyalties weren’t truly questioned.  Not when he still holds such a high spot in Elijah’s court.

                “Ah, the delicate Flower,” Katerina greets, and Caroline has to remind herself that the consort goes by _Katherine_ these days, comments when Caroline accepts the seat Elijah motions toward.  “You wear trouble on your brow.”

                “It’s Niklaus,” Caroline says, and she knows her voice is stiff.  In Elijah’s eyes, she sees understanding, but in Katherine’s there’s nothing but gleeful anticipation.  She’s played nicely with Klaus for centuries for Elijah’s sake, and because Klaus’ power far surpasses her own, but no amount of time will ever have her cease to wish for Klaus’ death.

                “You spoke of murmurs from his court, but refused to elaborate,” Elijah’s gaze is direct, but unquestioning, just as he had accepted it when Caroline had held her silence on the dark rumors coming from New Orleans.  She feels a pang of guilt, for considering keeping this secret, for even a second.  Elijah has put great trust in her, and to think that considered for even a second breaking that trust is humbling.  “If you’re here now, then you have irrefutable proof.”

                “I sent in Bonnie,” Caroline says, so that Elijah and Katherine will know how serious the matter is.  Bonnie is her second, her most trusted, and for Caroline to have put her at such risk tells Elijah how serious the matter must be.  “I trusted no one else to find the truth.  Niklaus raises the dead.”

                “We _all_ raise the dead,” Katherine replies with rolled eyes.  “Your Bonnie is proof of that, is she not?”

                “It’s not Making, m’lady.  It is the actual dead.  Bonnie says their eyes hold no soul, that they cannot speak, cannot _think_.  They are his puppets…” she hesitates, but though she’s the first to carry news of this outside of Klaus’ territory, he is hardly being subtle.  “He uses them as amusements in the evenings.”

                “Then he means for us to learn of them” – Elijah gets to his feet and paces to the glass doors that open onto a balcony – “for what purpose? Do not hold back now, Caroline.  We both know that if there is a person that knows the heart of Niklaus, it is you.”

                “Being bed partners doesn’t give me the inside line on him, sire,” Caroline replies immediately, one of her politic responses that has Katherine scoffing and rolling her eyes, and Elijah simply tapping his fingers on glass and waiting.  “No one knows the heart of Niklaus.  He has none to speak of.  He just has an obsession for pretty wings.”

                “Seven hundred years is a long time to indulge in an obsession of pair of pretty wings, Caroline,” Elijah shoots back, and Caroline says nothing.  They both speak true, of course.  Even she cannot truly claim to believe his obsession remains purely because of her wings, though his fascination with them has ever lasted.  But she also speaks true when she says he has no heart.

                Klaus has worked very hard to ensure he has no heart.

                “My relationship, or lack of, with Klaus is irrelevant.  My loyalty is to you, sire.”

                Elijah’s gaze softens at her words, and he gives her a smile.

                “Your loyalty has never been in question, Caroline.  Tell us more then, of what Bonnie has discovered of these dead that Niklaus raises.”

                “They seem to obey his every order.  He has some that he keeps among his guards.  Bonnie says you almost can’t tell the difference between them… not until you look into their eyes, and see how empty of life they are” – it’s Caroline’s turn to get to her feet, contemplating 700 years of history, and the Klaus that has held her, that has kissed her and made her body sing… and the Niklaus that would create monsters.  And it all comes down to one simple word: power.  Klaus’ driving force – “it’s a message.  He wants you all to know his powers grow.”

                “His aren’t the only ones,” Elijah points out, and Caroline gives the smallest of nods.  It’s true, that all the members of the Cadre are increasing in power…

                But Klaus is the eldest.

                “A Cascade,” she murmurs, and Katherine’s head whips toward her, her eyes narrowing in question.  “My father told me of it once.  When Archangels… _evolve_.”

                “I could almost wish your parents still lived,” Elijah says with a heavy sigh.  “The wisdom of Ancients… it could be useful right now.”

                _Begging for mercy, but no words coming out, because she had cried so long her voice was lost.  Chains weigh her limbs down, ever heavy, anchoring her where she cannot be saved._

_Why?  That’s what she wants to know, but all that comes from her throat is croaks, and all she hears is laughter.  Dark, insane laughter._

_“He will learn.  I will show him.”_

Caroline stares at a vase of flowers on a table, Katherine’s feminine touch to a room Elijah has decorated with wood and dark colors.  She flicks a loose petal and watches it fall to the table top.

                “The price that would come with them still living isn’t one you’d wish to pay for their allegiance,” she says after a moment, and she knows there are questions that both Elijah and Katherine have – they’ve both asked them in the centuries past, only to have Caroline carefully sidestep them – but they’ve learned that such questions will gain no answers.  “I’ve called Bonnie back from New Orleans.”

                “Is that wise?” Katherine asks, the life of Caroline’s prized vampire clearly outweighed by her worry over what Klaus plots.  She’s right to worry, of course.  Should the awakened dead be a signal that Klaus has finally lost his tenuous hold on sanity, then Katherine could very well be the first that he goes after.

                700 years and so many whispers, and Caroline has never been able to uncover the truth of Klaus’ history with Katherine and her family, so deeply buried is it in blood and time.

                “Klaus knows her,” Caroline replies.  “He’s allowed her in his kingdom out of manners and perhaps a fondness for me.  With everything so unsettled… I have people with which he is not as familiar.”

                _Of whom I’m not as fond._   She doesn’t say the words, but she knows that Elijah knows the truth, that for Bonnie, she would risk a great deal.  He gives her a nod.

                “Keep us informed, Caroline.”

                “Of course, sire.”

\---

                Many of the Cadre remain locked firmly in the past.  Klaus would have himself, except that he had a pretty little Flower to keep up with, and she embraces every leap forward that technology has taken. 

                Caroline ever eludes him.  Oh, he’s tasted her over the centuries – _many_ times, and each seems to leave him hungrier – but ever does she return to London and her precious _sire_.  Were it not for millennia of respect, Klaus might hate Elijah for that.

                As it is, the pursuit keeps him young.  And in touch with the modern day.

                And that, of course, is why he makes the center of his kingdom a well situated, carefully maintained club.  A place out of time, in the French Quarter that seems to be stuck forever in the past. 

                And it _is_ to keep in touch with the modern day, not because he could imagine Caroline twirling on the dance floor to the noise they call music today.  Caroline has always loved to dance; it was one of the ways he finally managed to seduce her, because their bodies had moved so very well together.  Back when dancing was actually filled with class, and not practically fornication as it was today.

                He’s brought out of his yearnings for a simpler time when Maddox enters.  He walks just behind a slim, dark skinned vampire, and Klaus smirks to see her.

                “I found her at the airport,” Maddox informs him. 

                “Leaving already, Bonnie?” Klaus asks the woman, whose green eyes sparkle with anger, but otherwise her face is smooth and void of emotion.  She is Caroline’s most trusted companion, and the Little Fledgling would never entrust a fool.  “Have a seat.”

                Bonnie slides onto a chair delicately.

                “I’ve been called home, Archangel,” she says at last, her voice filled with all the deference his position commands.  “Caroline wishes-”

                “Caroline wishes to get you out of my grasp, because she knows now of my Reborn.  It took you long enough, you know, to get the information to her.  I was beginning to think you never would” – Bonnie stiffens at his words, and fear has replaced the anger, so Klaus leans forward with a smirk – “don’t fret so, Bonnie.  So long as you don’t act foolishly, I have no intention of hurting you.  Quite the opposite, I wish you stay in perfect health.”

                “Caroline,” she says, her voice soft, because she has been Caroline’s companion for six hundred years, and knows of her history with the Archangel in front of her.  “You mean to use me to get to Caroline.”

                “Did you know that in 700 years, she has never stepped foot in my territory, Bonnie?”

                Bonnie says nothing, but of course she knows this.  Caroline has gone to the lands of every other member of the Cadre; has returned to Rebekah’s time and again, and Klaus knows it’s because it’s the land of her birth, but that doesn’t cull his jealousy of the blonde Archangel that has never seen Caroline well enough to give her the respect she deserves. 

                “700 years… don’t you think it’s time to change that?”

                “She is loyal to Elijah,” Bonnie says, and had she been anyone else, Klaus would have likely killed her for that.  But she’s not anyone else.  She is Caroline’s, was Made by Caroline, and Klaus can respect that this dark skinned woman shares her Maker’s bravery in the face of his power.

                But that doesn’t mean he can allow it.

                He sees the moment the panic enters Bonnie’s eyes, when she realizes that she can’t move, that her energy is draining, and Klaus leans back.  The panic becomes tears, and it’s not until one of them falls that he releases his hold on Bonnie, and she lets out a rattling breath, clutching at her chest.

                “I didn’t allow you to see all my secrets, Bonnie,” Klaus says, his smile pleasant, his eyes promising death if she isn’t very, _very_ careful.  “And it’s not her loyalty to Elijah that I’m about to test” – he leans forward, his smile widening – “it’s her loyalty to _you_.”

\---

                She’s on Facetime with a spy in Rebekah’s court when Enzo knocks on her door, looking far too solemn. 

                “Sarah, just keep your head down.  Rebekah likes deference, and as long as you show her that, she’ll ignore you.  So long as she doesn’t see you as an oddity, she won’t view you as a threat, and then her tongue will loosen.  If you come to truly fear for your well-being, we will discuss this again.”

                She hits the end button and clutches the edge of the loveseat on which she sits.

                “It’s Bonnie,” she says before Enzo can say anything.  Bonnie was supposed to text her, when she was boarding her flight, but the message never came.

                “A message came through while you were speaking to Sarah.  The Archangel of New Orleans invites you to visit his territory.  _Only_ you.”

                Enzo sits next to her, his hand covering hers and squeezing. It’s meant to give comfort, and for many centuries she had relied on him for that comfort.  A foolish angel in the big world for the first time, she had foolishly trusted the wrong man, thinking that Damon didn’t hold the same danger for her that Klaus had, only to find very differently.

                He would never have the power to become a member of the Cadre, didn’t have even a fraction of the power that Caroline now does, but at the time she had still been weak, and he had nearly broken her.

                Enzo had saved her before he could do so.

                “Did I ever tell you what happened to Damon?”

                “He was a favorite of Sage’s,” Enzo replies, shooting a glance at her out of the corner of his eye.  “I assumed that he was quietly punished, and otherwise unharmed.”

                And Caroline wonders what it must have took, for Enzo to live with that.  With believing that he’d had to let Caroline’s abuser go.  She leans in to kiss his cheek, and he smiles at the action.

                “I received his heart in a box,” she says after pulling away.  “And they say that Klaus uses his skull as a penholder.”

                “A heart in a box.  Interesting courtship gift.  I would have thought it would be the latest gossip.”

                It wasn’t, only because Caroline had told no one, not until now.  It had been the first blood that had soaked her hands.  She may not have pulled the organ from Damon’s chest, may not have been the one to peel the skin from his skull… but the blood was on her soul.  Klaus killed him, because he had dared to touch something that Klaus had laid claim to.

                Caroline could never quite make herself regret Damon’s fate, though she had tried.  But there were parts of her, dark and vicious parts, that made her the daughter of her parents, and try though Caroline might to be the opposite of everything they had stood for, she couldn’t quite lose that vicious streak that had taken great pleasure in squeezing the heart into a bloody mess and then burning the proof it had ever existed.

                Later, Klaus had sent her a pillow made from Damon’s wings.  She had sent it back, along with a note of thanks.

                She had never acknowledged what he had done except for that note.

                “I’m assuming there’s a reason you’re telling me this?” Enzo asks, breaking her ruminations on Klaus and Damon, and memories that had haunted her, until she had received that heart.

                “Simply that none of this is simple, is it?” She looks across the room, to the doors of her balcony, and contemplates the leaves she can see blowing on the trees outside.   “Do you think he will hurt her?”

                “I think you know that answer to that better than anyone,” Enzo replies.  “If you wish it, I will come with you.”

                “You weren’t invited.”

                They lapse into silence, and Caroline continues to contemplate the trees.  For now, she knows that Bonnie is safe.  She is the only leverage Klaus currently holds, and there is enough honor left in him – enough _sanity_ – that Bonnie will remain safe until Caroline gives him her answer.

                After that… Well, there is only one answer she can give really.

                “I’ll inform him that I look forward to seeing his territory.  I’ve heard great things about the Colonies.”

                “They’re not called the Colonies anymore, Gorgeous.”

                “I know” – Caroline shoots him a tiny, mischievous grin – “and I imagine Klaus doesn’t particularly like them being called that, either.”

                Enzo chuckles and gets to his feet, he leans over and presses a kiss to her forehead.  Caroline closes her eyes and takes comfort from the contact with someone who has become so very synonymous with safety to her over the centuries. 

                “If you need me…”

                “I won’t,” she promises.  “He will not hurt me.”

                “He is mad, Caroline,” Enzo says, pulling back from her, his dark eyes worried for her.

                “Perhaps, but I have seen the darkest and the lightest parts of him, Lorenzo.  He will not hurt me.”

                “You are in love with him.”

                The words echo in the space between them, and Caroline feels them like an arrow to her heart.  The thought has occurred to her at different points in the past 700 years, but never has she actually said them outside her own mind.  And now that they’ve been put out there…

                “No,” she says after a long moment.  “I do not love him.  I have never allowed myself to, not when I knew what he was” – she turns her gaze to the window and taps her lips with a finger – “but there has always been a connection.  It’s why I keep going back to him, time and again for centuries.”

                “But you’ve never gone to his territory.”

                No, she hadn’t.  In 700 years, she has avoided putting herself in his hands like that.  Because while she could look Enzo in the eyes and say that, in this moment, she does not love Niklaus… she fears that should she go there, should she see his home…

                She very much fears that this will change things, and Caroline isn’t sure she is prepared for such a change.

\---

                Klaus is in a meeting with his Second, Stefan, when the call comes.  It’s on Bonnie’s cellphone, of course, because Caroline will feel the need to test him, to see for herself that he has her vampire.

                “Hello, Little Fledgling,” Klaus greets, and there is a long silence on the other end of the line.

                “Archangel,” she finally says, and Klaus finds his eyes drifting closed at the sound of her voice.  He has been growing in power – all the Cadre has – and it’s been an ever present storm within his mind, but hearing her voice?  The tempest calms for the first time in months, and he can think clearly again.  “This is a rather dirty trick you are playing.”

                “Perhaps I simply miss you, Flower” – though he prefers to use his own pet name for her, one that she stopped protesting a century ago, when she realized protesting would gain her nothing, he does occasionally like to use the name gifted to her by Kol shortly after she became Elijah’s spymistress – “I thought to wait until I next travelled to the Refuge, but then I found myself impatient.”

                “You’ve never been an impatient man, Niklaus,” Caroline replies, her tongue curling around her name, and in 700 years, Klaus has never tired of the sound of his voice on her tongue.

                “Then perhaps I saw an opportunity.”

                Another pause, and then a soft exhale, and he wishes he could feel her breath on his skin.  They both know what this call is about, what she is to say, and victory is so close he can already feel her in his arms.

                “I accept your invitation,” she says at last.  “I look forward to seeing what your territory has to offer.”

                Klaus can read between the lines of course, and he knows every cadence of Caroline’s voice.  He may have backed her into a corner, but Caroline is ever an opportunist.  She will be using this visit to learn all she can about his Reborn, and about the powers that he is gaining during this time of change.  Klaus’ gaze goes to the two dead-eyed shells manning the doors, and he smirks to himself.  All the strength of a vampire, with none of their ability or desire to run from their service.  And even better?  No century deadline to end those years of service.  The one on the right still has sparks of life in his eyes, but that will soon change, and he will become as dead-eyed as his companion.

                Caroline can come and snoop all she wants, for Klaus is done with hiding.  Soon, the whole world will know of his Reborn, and they will fear him and worship him as their God.

                And Caroline will be right by his side.

\---

                _“It was Damon.”_

_Klaus didn’t say anything at first, when he heard the three words.  They were stated in Stefan’s solemn tone, and reminded Klaus of why he had made Stefan his second to begin with.  He didn’t allow any of the emotions saying those words to Klaus must evoke leak into his voice._

_“Your brother,” Klaus replied at last, when Stefan said nothing more.  “He is a dead man.”_

_“I know.”_

_Klaus simply gave a small nod._

_When he had encountered Elijah and Katerina at Rebekah’s court, Katerina looking angry and pale, neither would tell him anything, except that Caroline had been injured and was recovering under the tender care of the healer Elena at the Refuge.  Hearing that Elena, the best healer available, was in charge of the Little Fledgling’s care told Klaus all he needed to know._

_Caroline’s might be injured, but the worst of those injuries were emotional, Elena able to grant great peace to those whose heart and minds were wounded._

_He had put Stefan in charge of finding out the details, and now here they were._

_“How bad was it?”_

_“Lorenzo stopped the attack before he could… but her wings were broken, as were many bones.  My brother has never been known for being kind to those that told him no.”_

_Stefan gave another nod._

_“I’ll not ask you to involve yourself in this.”_

_“Thank-you, Sire, but I would stand by your side, even through this.”_

_Damon screamed for days, and Stefan remained there through them all.  When Klaus finally ripped Damon’s heart out, it was with the knowledge that Damon didn’t have his brother’s strength, that such an act would kill him.  Klaus took pleasure in it, in reminding Damon that by angelic standards, he would never be strong.  That Caroline held more potential for power in a single delicate pinky, than Damon did in the whole of his body._

_He sent Caroline Damon’s heart, knowing she would possibly hate him for it, but wanting her to have the peace of mind, that would allow her to heal not just physically, but also mentally. He received no acknowledgement from her, but he had a bone deep desire to make sure she knew what the gift meant.  That Damon was dead._

_The feathers he had plucked from the man’s wings were turned into a pillow, made of fabrics that reminded him of the sunset shades of her wings._

_She sent back the pillow, but it came accompanied by a note._

I thank-you, for your assistance.

\---

                Klaus is watching when Caroline arrives in the heart of his territory.  He doesn’t go to greet her, not immediately.  Not when Bonnie is there, and Klaus knows that Caroline will need to be sure that the vampire is unharmed.

                He recognizes the strong bonds between angel and vampire when they hug tightly, and Klaus doubts Caroline would have done this, come to the very heart of a land she’s carefully avoided for centuries, for anyone less than Bonnie.

                Once they’ve had time to speak in low voices – Bonnie surely updating Caroline on his Reborn, who Klaus has made sure are absent for this first reunion – he joins them on the floor of his club.

                “Hello, Caroline,” he says, and Caroline’s spine stiffens at the sound of his voice.  Bonnie takes a step closer to her, as though she can somehow take on whatever emotion she sees on Caroline’s face, but the blonde rests a hand on her shoulder and gives her head a small shake.

                “You got me here,” she says without turning to him.  “Is Bonnie to stay as well?”

                “We both know you have better manners than that, Little Fledgling.  You have ever been the genteel lady in the face of adversary. Surely you can face _me_?”

                Caroline squeezes Bonnie’s shoulder, and then slowly turns to face Klaus.  It has been over a decade, since he’s seen her last, and he’s struck by the simple beauty of her.  Blonde hair and sea eyes, and he doesn’t fight the urge to touch her, reaching out to frame her cheek with his hand.  She turns into his touch, her eyes drifting closed for a moment.

                “Bonnie is free to go whenever she wishes.  You know that you and yours will ever be allowed to freely come and go from my territory.”

                She smiles lightly in return, the expression nearly rueful. 

                “Careful, Archangel, or I might begin to think you actually care,” she replies, pulling away from his touch to turn to Bonnie once more.  Klaus might have  been angered at that, except that it gave him a view of her wings, the wings that he’s never stopped admiring, even when he began to admire other parts of her nearly as much.  Sunset and ocean wings that make his fingers itch. 

                “Return to London, Bonnie,” Caroline says, grasping the vampire’s hand, and Bonnie shakes her head with a frown.

                “My loyalty-”

                “Is to your Archangel,” there’s a warning in Caroline’s voice, as she stops Bonnie before she can claim loyalty to the blonde rather than Elijah.  It’s a smart move, Klaus muses, as he watches her wings rustle.  There’s a feather that’s been dislodged in her flight, and he wants to reach out and pull it free, but instead maintains his distance, giving them the illusion of privacy.  “And I need someone to oversee my operations while I’m away.  My Whispers don’t stop just because I’m gone.”

                It’s the only argument Caroline can make, showing her utter trust in the other woman.  He knows Bonnie would love to attack him, but she’s too good at what she does, too well trained by Caroline, and manages to give him a bow, while very determinedly _not_ looking directly at him.  Klaus give her a merry smile in acknowledgement, and when the vampire disappears, he gives a victorious smirk.

                Stefan will follow her, ensure that she does indeed get on a plane for London.  And now Klaus has his Little Fledgling all to himself.  He steps up behind her, reaching out to grasp that loose feather, and when it’s in his hand, he runs it down the length of her arm.

                “You’ve been neglecting them,” he says, stroking the beauty of the wing spans, before his fingers run along the sensitive skin, where they join to her back.  It took nearly three centuries, before she stopped growing rigid at the feel of his hands on her wings, and it’s one of his greatest pleasures, to know that she still grows such for anyone but him.  “That’s a crime.”

                “I sometimes believe you want my wings more than you want me,” she muses.

                “In the beginning I did,” Klaus replies, twirling her in his arms so that she faces him.  Her wings fold up along her back, as he wraps his own around them, cocooning them in a faux semblance of privacy.  “Then I grew to admire that brilliant mind of yours.  How are you, Flower?”

                “I’ve always hated that name,” Caroline replies with the slightest of huffs.  “I think that’s why Kol was so determined it must stick.”

                “ _Look the innocent flower, but be the venomous serpent beneath it_.  You must admit it’s fitting… though I prefer my own name for you” – he leans down, nips at her pulse point and feels her breath catch – “ _Little Fledgling_.”

                He pulls back to bend down, to take her lips in a hungry, claiming kiss.  It’s been centuries since he had another lover, and he hadn’t realized how much he was hungering for touch, not until she was in his arms, returning his kisses with a fierceness so few realized she held.

                “If this was all you wanted of me, you could have waited until we met again,” she murmurs when they break apart.  Her lips are wet and swollen from his kisses, and her hair is a mass of curls put out of place by delving hands.  It makes him think of silk sheets and how it feels to be inside of her, and his hunger grows.  “It would not have been long, I’m sure, before Rebekah threw one of her balls.”

                Rebekah, the Archangel of Russia, loved her parties, and always invited the other Archangels.  Though Elijah often declined such invitations, his spymistress was never as quick to give up the chance to infiltrate the court of another member of the Cadre, and to touch base with her people in person.

                Klaus always took those opportunities to see her.

                “I didn’t want to see your wings spread out on a strange bed in Moscow.  I wanted you here, warm and willing in the place I call home.”

                Rather than charming her as he had meant the words to, they make her brow furrow, and she presses a palm to his chest, pushing him back.  They both know that if he chose to push it, he could easily out muscle her.  Caroline was a power, he could feel it bubbling within her, and she had the potential to be great, but she wasn’t Cadre, not now, and Klaus could crush her with barely a thought.

                But when he had seen her for the second time, after her experiences with Damon, she had been so very fragile, though not broken.  Never broken.  And he had admired the strength within a young angel enough to move slowly.  Decades doing so had created a habit he had never bothered to break.

                If Caroline pushed him away, he went.  For a time.

                “Why now?” she asks, taking a step back from them.

                “Come now, Caroline,” Klaus rolls his eyes, something he would never do in the presence of anyone but her.  “We both know you know the answer to that.”

                “Your Reborn,” she says, her voice quiet, and her eyes troubled.  Klaus grits his teeth at that look in her eyes, and curses Elijah for being such a staid fool.  Because of that, Caroline hasn’t yet learned to appreciate true power.

                She can’t quite appreciate what he has in this ability to make the dead dance to his whims.

                “My Reborn,” he agrees, tilting her chin up so that they meet each other’s eyes.  He finally has her here, but he can’t be seen as weak, not even by her, and so that look is a warning.  She can carry the tales back to Elijah, but she will not interfere in what he plans to do.

                He is too powerful, too close to Godhood, and not even the Cadre can stop him from his goals. 

\---

                Niklaus has always had a darkness in him.  No one knows what his true age is, nor can they remember a time he wasn’t an Archangel.  Such age and power is not held by being kind, and Caroline has never had girlish fantasies that he might ever be anything but what he is.

                But this darkness… it’s different.  It carries the taint of a madness only an Archangel can attain.

                Caroline knows that madness well.

                _Screaming to be set free, wanting to know why.  And ever present, that mad laughter –_ I’ll show him _– haunting her ears as wings are torn and she’s left chained and broken._

“You look at me with fear,” Klaus murmurs, reaching out to touch the skin at the corner of her eye.  “You’ve never feared me before, not like this.”

                “I’ve always feared you,” is Caroline’s automatic response, and Klaus gives her a look of exasperate fondness, one that pushes the darkness away, even if for a moment, and Caroline finds herself weakening, as she always does around him, and letting down guards that she should never let down, not around a madman that will destroy her and never realize what he’s done.  “But no, not like this.”

                “You don’t understand, not yet.  But you will. Once you see my reborn, you’ll understand what it is I can achieve, what no other Archangel can achieve.”

                _You think to kill me?  I’m an Archangel.  I’m a_ Goddess _._

He would have known them for years, her parents.  Would have known them both at the height of their power, and once the insanity set in, and Caroline wonders if he knows.  If he knows that he sounds so much like Elizabeth that it makes her heart stutter.

                But she knows that darkness, knows that it bodes ill for everyone, and she needs to know more about it.  So she pulls him down for a kiss, and if she closes her eyes, then she can imagine its centuries past, and he doesn’t carry that new darkness that speaks of her nightmares in his eyes.

                She can pretend that he’s the man whose home she avoided, out of fear that coming here would mean never leaving again.

                And once she opens her eyes, she’ll continue to smile at him, even as she gathers the information the rest of the Cadre so desperately needs, if they wish to have any hope of stopping Niklaus’ madness before it can truly take root in the rest of the world.

                “You didn’t ask me here, just to speak to me of your Reborn,” she says when they break apart, his hands a warm presence on her hips, hers framing his face. 

                “No,” Klaus agrees, and when he lifts her, it’s as though he’s lifting a feather.  Caroline wraps her legs around his waist, and flares her wings, so that her feathers entwine with his.  Were he anyone else, the contact would make her think of chains and fear, but it’s been centuries since Klaus inspired those dreams.  Instead, it’s memories of stolen nights and dancing together in the clouds, bodies entwining in the way only two angels could.  “I didn’t bring you here just to speak of the Reborn.”

\---

                When he tumbles her onto his bed, located in the rooms he keeps above the club, he has to stop a moment.  Because he has wanted this for 700 years.  The décor and building have changed.  Even the bed has evolved with the times.  But always it was the same dream.

                Her in his home, in his _bed_.

                Her blonde hair forms a halo above her head, and is it any wonder, that there have been hundreds of painters inspired by her innocent beauty?  By the beautiful contrast of wings?  Klaus is a painter, the one mortal pursuit he’s ever found worth his time, and he has dozens of canvasses, all of them with her form, painted in private moments between them over the centuries.

                But never has he quite gotten her right.  It’s the wings, in the end, that always give him trouble.  The wings and the turbulent storm that haunts her eyes, that he can never quite get to transfer onto paper.

                “I’ve missed you,” she murmurs, and the storm in that gaze has calmed for a moment, replaced instead by longing, and Klaus knows that this isn’t one of the lies that falls so easily from her pink lips.  This is one of her rare moments of honesty; so rare of the centuries, that finding the truth has become a game for him.

                One of the few games he loses more often than he wins.

                “Silly Fledgling,” he replies, brushing his lips over hers, before moving down her body, to press kisses to whatever bare skin he can find.  “You’ve never had need to miss me, not when you would always be welcome by my side.”

                “Not always,” she replies, and then whimpers when he finds a sensitive spot on her neck and nips it, then soothes it with his tongue.  She is probably right.  In the beginning there was attraction and fascination with her wings, but she had been so very young and breakable, and had she given in immediately, he probably would have taken his fill and never looked back.     

                And what a loss that would have been.

                Her power thrums within her, answering to his own hurricane of power.  The daughter of two Archangels, whom, at the time they both vanished, had been even older than him.   It should be no surprise that power thrums within her, yet too often is she still overlooked despite that.

                It’s her innocent face, he thinks.  The sweet expression that has never matured past early womanhood.  She’ll never look older than a mortal college student, and so is underestimated because too many cannot see past the pretty flower to the danger, to the _power_ , that is her core.

                Kol’s nickname is so incredibly apt.

                “I want you to stay with me,” he says after a moment, because she had given him a rare moment of honesty, so he’ll give one in return.  “It’s said that in times gone by, the most powerful of Archangels always had a consort.”

                Her breath catches, and she stares at him wide eyed, and isn’t this a rare surprise?  To make the incomparable Flower speechless; to silence her silver tongue and actually surprise the woman that knows everything.

                “Klaus, I-”

                It was too soon for such honesty, so Klaus silences her objection with a bruising kiss.  Caroline has ever adored pretty things, another reason why so many underestimated her, and the yellow dress she wears is such a pretty thing.

                Klaus is ruthless when he rips it to free her skin to his touch.  The underwear she wears beneath it is of the modern variety, and though it’s not the corsets he so appreciated on her in the past, he must admit that she does look lovely in them. 

                He kisses along the slope of a breast and dances his fingers down her belly, to push aside the scrap of material they call panties and delve a finger into her.  She’s wet for him, and arches her hips into his hand.  Her nipples harden beneath the fabric of her bra, and he takes it into her mouth, before growing impatient with the fabric hiding her from his view and tears the bra from her body.

                “Those don’t come cheap,” she growls, before letting out another gasp, rolling her hips against his hand once more.  “I have expensive tastes.”

                “I can afford to keep you in lingerie,” he murmurs against the skin of her breast.  This time, when he sucks her nipple, he can actually taste her, and it makes him murmur in appreciation.  The taste of her is addicting, almost as addicting as the helpless noises she makes as she continues to ride his hand to completion, coming with a cry of his name.  “I’ve missed this.  Do you see now, why I wished you to come here?”

                “For sex?” she replies, putting a hand on his chest, to push him on his back.  As she unbuttons his pants and works them down his legs, he strips off his shirt, and welcomes her with open arms when she moves up his body once more.  She straddles his waist, his hands come up to cup her breasts.  She smiles at him – the smile that she only ever wears in his bed, and he tugs her down, needing to kiss that smile.

                He’s already hard for her.  Just her scent is enough to make him hungry for her, but the hungry noises she had made make him even harder.  When she slides own the length of him, his head slams back into the bed, and he grasps her waist again, helping her to ride him in a steady rhythm that has him groaning.

                She leans down and kisses him, the easy intimacy of someone that knows his body, and how well it fits to hers. 

                When they finish, he pulls her into his arms and kisses the top of her head, running a finger along her arm.  She’s curled into his chest, her body a comforting weight on his wing.

                “I can’t stay, Klaus,” she says at last, and his hold tightens for a moment, his hand pausing in its stroking of her skin.

                “You’ve never been to my court,” he replies, moving his fingers once more and trying to keep his voice light, to keep the anger that wells in him at how she can think to leave so easily.  But she’s only just arrived, doesn’t yet know what all he can offer her, if she will but reach for it.  He simply needs time, and then she _will_.  She will know, and she will stay.  “We both know you wish to discover my nefarious plots… isn’t it time you make your attempts in person, rather than sending others from London to do your dirty work?”

                “I’m a busy woman, Niklaus.  I cannot be in all places” – a small smile graces her lips, and he knows that, for the moment, talk of her departure is over – “kiss me like you did that night in Rebekah’s court.”

                “Which night, Love?  You’re inordinately fond of Rebekah’s lands.” 

                He can’t help the jealous note that shadows his tone when he speaks, but he still leans over her, cupping her cheek and grazing his nose against hers.

                “The first night.  When you finally managed to seduce me.  It was poorly done of you, taking advantage of my love of dancing.”

                “We use all the weapons at our disposal, Little Fledgling.”

                But he slants his mouth over hers, starts with soft, short kisses, slowly seducing her into longer ones, until her hands tangle in his hair just as his are in hers, and their tongues tangle until he’s once again thrusting into her, catching her moans on his tongue and surrounding them both with his wings, closing out the rest of the world in darkness until it’s just her and him and nothing else matters.

                They don’t speak of her leaving again that night.

\---

                His city is vibrant, filled with life and an old fashioned charm that has merged with modern day convenience.  She allows herself to enjoy the wonder for a couple of hours.  To imagine that this could be her home, that _he_ could be her home.

                _You are in love with him_.

                Enzo’s words echo in her mind, and she knows she can’t do this.  She can’t walk about his city, as though she belongs.  Not when she knows there is a rot beneath the surface that she must look into.  The rot that lies beneath _his_ surface.

                She has never been able to blend in.  Not with sunshine in her hair and wings.  But she’s always been overlooked, because of her innocent face; the face most view as far too young to be a threat.  Of course, not everyone falls for that.

                Stefan is one of the few that’s never taken his eyes off of her.

                Klaus’ second is a somber man with a vicious dark streak.  One that matches the one his brother had, the one he tested out on _Caroline_.

                “Do you really think we’ll simply allow you to go wherever you please?” he asks her with an amusement that’s tempered by the anger he’s carried around her since their first official meeting nearly five years after she received a heart in a box.

                “I think that’s exactly what you’ll do,” Caroline replies coolly, not bothering with donning the cloak of innocence and lies that comes so easily to her.  It won’t work on Caroline, and she has no desire to play the role around Stefan anyway, not when she can see Damon written in the planes of his face.  “Your Archangel wants me to stay, Stefan, and he wants to show me the power he carries.”

                “As always, Flower, you’re correct.  So shall I introduce you to the Reborn?”

                “I’ve seen them already.”

                Dead eyes that lack a soul, they are centered at Klaus’ stronghold, the club he calls both home and the center of his empire.  At first, she would think they were vampires.  Until she realized that they were a blackhole, empty of the power even the weakest vampires held, and instead filled with…

                Their presence made her _shiver_ , their very presence a dark mark on the senses that have always been so sensitive to the powers of others, helping her to determine their place in the hierarchy, and so how to handle them.  But in this case, there is nothing but that nauseating darkness that makes her pull her sense back.

                “Then why are you here, rather than with the Sire?” Stefan asks, because Caroline is in an office, sitting at a computer.  She knows that Klaus has kept himself updated, in part because of her, but mostly because his grasp on power requires keeping up with the times.

                Stefan, on the other hand, is a warrior, and his expression when he looks at the computer is one of distaste.

                He keeps his watch over her, until another young angel comes rushing to the door, her expression pale.  Her dark eyes dart to Caroline for a moment, before she looks to Stefan again.

                “Sir… it’s very important.”

                Caroline can feel Stefan give her a suspicious look, but she acts as though she is absorbed in the computer.  She had turned a hacker about a decade ago, and part of his service to her was teaching her how to work the magic with computers that he so excelled at.  Klaus hadn’t done the same, so breaking into his systems was surprisingly easy. 

                But for all that he had kept his systems updated, he has put nothing of value there.  Which means turning to the old fashioned.  She moves to the door on silent feet, easing the door open.  Stefan might not trust her, might have some idea of what she is capable, but even he underestimates her, hasn’t moved nearly far enough away from the door with the young angel.

                “Are you certain of this, Jane Anne?”

                “Yes, sir.  Three more have fallen into the madness.  Vampires of moderate power that ventured through the Reborn’s quarters.  Sir… what do we do?”

                “ _We_ do nothing.  You stay silent on this, Jane Anne.  _I_ will go to the Sire.  Forget you heard any of this.”

                Caroline knows the young angel must be nodding, but she also knows what will come next.  She doesn’t have to be in the hall, to know the quiet gasp is Jane Anne’s shock when Stefan’s hand enters her back to tear out her heart.  It’s a cruelty, the way that he let the girl believe she was of some value.

                Stefan has learned well from his master.

                Caroline leans against the wall and stares out the window across the office.  It gives her a view of buildings, and suddenly she misses her own office in London.  It’s high in the tower Elijah has built, has a view of the city and the sky, and a balcony from which she can take off. 

                She’s hit by a pang of homesickness so strong, because when she was there, she could play pretend.  She could play pretend that Klaus wasn’t losing himself.  But now that she’s here?

                His Reborn are not the simple puppets he would have her believe.  They are something far more sinister – sinister enough that Stefan would kill an angel rather than have what they truly were revealed to the world.  Klaus is keeping secrets, and now she must reveal them all to the world.

                She can feel his touch on her skin, leaving burning fire in its wake, and she can remember the darkness in his eyes caused by too many years and too much power.

                Eyes like those haunt her ever step, and her heart already grieves that she is going to lose another to it.

                _You are in love with him._

She had denied it, told Enzo she was far too strong for that.

                She fears, very much, that she’s going to be revealed for a liar.

\---

                Bonnie wasn’t the only spy she had in Klaus’ court, she was merely the one of highest standing.  She couldn’t speak to them openly, of course.  Not if she wanted to keep people in her court.

                But Caroline was still clever.

                “Caroline,” Klaus’ smile was brilliant when she enters his rooms, the rooms he has extended to her as well.  She has people digging into the myster of the Reborn, but she has a job she must do herself.

                She must keep his eyes on her, and off their snooping.

                “You should show me your city,” she says, watching him as he changes his shirt.  He pauses in the process of buttoning it around his wings, and Caroline steps up, taking the job over.  Her fingers brush against his skin and she feels a jolt of the electric heat that is always present between them.  The touch lingers even after the buttons are done up, and Klaus reaches up, grasping her hand by the wrist, an pulling her hand to his lips.  He presses kisses to her fingertips, carefully tugging her closer.

                “One might thing you wish to distract me, Little Fledgling,” Klaus murmurs, leaning down to brush soft kisses to her lips.

                “No,” she replies with a smile, and she’s not sure that she can actually remember the last time she has lied so blatantly to his face, the last time she purposely set out to fool him.  She’s not sure she’ll be successful, so she tugs him down to kiss his lips.

                She wishes it could truly be this easy.  That she could kiss him and everything could simply disappear with the touch, but Caroline has been alive far too long to be a fool, and Klaus has simply been alive far too long.

                “If we keep this up, you won’t see my city.”

                Caroline smiles at him and lets him tug her out the door, and with one hand hits send on an email she already has ready, letting her people know the Archangel will be absent.

                New Orleans truly is a vibrant city.  She loves London, but after years of living there, she has to admit there’s a charm to what New Orleans has to offer.  When Klaus feeds her baguettes, tells her of the revelry of Mardi Gras, Caroline finds herself almost forgetting about why she is doing this.  She laughs at the thought having beads tossed at her in return for a peek at her breasts, and smiles at him, feeling almost carefree.

                “Would you give me beads for such a thing?” she asks him, her voice teasing.  Klaus catches her with an arm around her waist, and she sees some of the mortals of the city coming up short, their expressions that of awe.  Seeing their audience, Klaus chuckles and steps from her, taking to the air in a powerful vertical takeoff. 

                Caroline follows suit, and when she catches up to him once more, he grasps her again, and she feels his power rush over her skin.

                “What did you do?” she asks him.

                “Such a unique gift,” he murmurs taking her lips.  “I covered us in a glamour.  I have no desire to share this side of you with the world.”

                “What side?” Caroline asks with a giggle, running a hand over the arch of his wing as he holds them in a hover.

                “Carefree,” Klaus replies, running a hand through hair that’s fluttering in front of her face.  “You come to life in my city, Little Fledgling.”

                Caroline feels her smile fall slightly, because it’s the truth.  The city seems to thrum in her veins and bring her to life as hasn’t in… _centuries_.  But it’s not just the city.  It’s _him_ as well.  Klaus and how, somehow in his home, he’s even more addictive.

                But beneath it all is that stench of rot, and Caroline can feel that thrum in her veins as well, threatening to poison something beautiful and damn near perfect.

                “Don’t do this, Caroline,” he says when he sees her expression.  “I can already feel you flying away, back to that stagnate prison you’ve created for yourself in London.  You deserve more than being Elijah’s flower, no matter how great you are in the role.  You deserve to be great in reality.”

                “Someday I may find greatness of my own, but for now I’ll remain in my role.”

                “Or you could become my consort.”

                The words make her freeze.  They shouldn’t.  He’s spent so many centuries trying to bring her here… and it shouldn’t surprise her.  For what other purpose should he want her here?  Yet she finds she has no words.  She stares at him.

                She folds her wings in, and lets herself fall away from him, hurtling toward the ground.  It had taken her centuries to perfect flight in such a way, so that she could allow the wind to catch her before she can hit the ground, so she can fly toward the club Klaus calls home.  Below her mortals gasp and point, their attention drawn by the beauty of her wings, but Caroline doesn’t see them.  She’s too caught up in the words of others.

                _Or you could become my consort_.

                _You are in love with him._

She lands on the roof, an still she can’t catch her breath.  She doesn’t know what to do, or to say, and when Klaus lands behind her, she is still at a loss.

                “Does the thought of power frighten you so much?” he demands, his voice harsh.  “Does the thought of realizing your true potential really disgust you so much?”

                “No,” she says softly, but she can’t say anything more.  Because it’s not the thought of power.  She knows she has power.  It’s her birthright, and she knows that, someday, she could rise to the very top of the power structure.  So no, it’s not power that frightens her.  It’s _him_.  It’s him and the secrets her people are ferreting out, and they are so very terrifying for her.

                “Then it’s me.  I never had you pegged as a coward, Little Fledgling.”

                And perhaps it’s time.  Perhaps she should take a gamble.

                “Show me your Reborn,” she tells him.  “All of it.  Every last dark secret you’ve been keeping about them.”

                “And if I do, you’ll become my consort?”

                Caroline clutches the edge of the roof, because she’s not ready for this.  For any of it.  But she has a single job.

                “ _Yes_.”

\---

                Her people have disappeared, if they even got to the heart of his Reborn, and it takes Caroline all of thirty seconds before she wishes she could disappear as well.

                The rot of them fills her senses, and makes everything in her rebel.  She presses herself in Klaus’ side, trying to surround herself in his power… only it doesn’t work. The rot is in him as well, beneath the surface and answering to the same within the Reborn.

                “This is wrong, Niklaus,” Caroline says, backing away, because their very presence makes her feel nauseous.  “This is so… _so_ _wrong_.”

                “This is _power_ , Caroline,” he cups her hands, and looks into her eyes, but when she searches his, she sees the power and the rot and little else of the man that showed her his city, that charmed her in the skies.  “They can make us the most powerful beings in the world.”

                “I know power, Klaus,” Caroline replies.  “I grew up surrounded by it.”

                _Chains holding her down and feathers torn from her wings.  A head tossed at their feet, and a scream so animalistic Caroline would never forget it.  Then pain flaring, and blood rushing down her front, and she was dead, wasn’t she?  She wouldn’t survive this, was too young._

“Don’t go away like that, Love.”

                Caroline comes back to herself to recoil from Klaus’ outreached hand.  She knows power.  Her parents were filled with it.  And it had nearly destroyed her.

                It _had_ destroyed them.

                “I will have no part of this, Klaus,” she tells him.  “What you’ve created here… these are monsters.  I can _feel_ it.”

                And she can feel more than that.  She can feel violence humming in the air.  Klaus’ eyes are dark with anger, and his creations are reacting to that darkness, moving restlessly, and Caroline can feel the fear rising up, choking her out.

                “I can’t _be_ here.”

                “You promised,” he hisses, grabbing her arms in a too strong grip, fingers digging into skin.  “You would be my consort.”

                “I lie,” she replies, staring him straight in the eyes, and for once he can’t calm the storm raging in her.  He just makes it worse, makes the fear worse, and her lips feel numb as she continues speaking.  “I lie all the time.”

                And this was when she would die, his anger rising up around them, choking her, and she can feel her knees weakening.  She hasn’t been surrounded by power like this for centuries, but it haunts her nightmares, has her waking screaming, and she can hear those screams in her mind, as she clutches her temples.

                “What is happening to them?” she demands, but she can’t even be sure that she’s said it out loud.

                “They are answering to their master,” Klaus replies, and his expression is twisted and smirking and he’s looking at her like she’s meat, and his Reborn are looking at _him_ like _he’s_ meat.  Hungry and ravenous and moving slowly around them.

                And then it’s Klaus screaming, agony in his voice, and whatever hold he’d had over her is broken, leaving her to stumble back.  The Reborn are converging, and one has bitten into Klaus, turning on its master, while others turn hungry eyes to Caroline.

                And she is a child of twenty-five again, and while part of her cries out to save Klaus, she can’t do it.  All she can do is feel terror, and she flees.  She flees Klaus and his Reborn, and it’s not until she is miles away and has thrown up the baguettes, is still heaving up an empty stomach, that she can finally think again.

                Within the hour, she has cleared New Orleans of all of her people.

                By the next day, she is in London once more.

\---

                                “They’re contagious.”

                Caroline says nothing as Bonnie joins her on her balcony. 

                “Alaric told me,” she adds, after the silence isn’t broken for some time. “After… they got out into the city.  Not far, but enough mortals were attacked, and the ones that weren’t took apart, they rose again with those dead eyes.  Niklaus created monsters.  Terrifying monsters.”

                “Alaric was supposed to leave,” Caroline replies, and her voice sounds remote, even to her.  But her mind is still caught up by the nightmare of Klaus and his Reborn, an so she doesn’t address that part of Bonnie’s statement.

                “He did, he stayed only long enough to get that information.  They’ve shut the city down now, the Archangel is missing. Stefan led a unit against the Reborn and destroyed them all, but Klaus was noticeably absent” – Bonnie hesitates, then reaches out, her hand warm on Caroline’s – “do you think he’s dead?”

                Caroline thinks of Klaus and power, and shakes her head.

                “No.  He’s injured, and his Reborn aren’t as perfect as he believed.  It’s a wound to his pride, but he won’t lick his wounds for long” – she looks out over the city – “he’ll be back soon.”

                “Will he come for you?”

                _You promised.  You would be my consort_.

                He had wanted the truth of his Reborn to be known, that’s why he had shown them to her.  Because he wanted the whole world to fear him.  But he also wanted her to be feared at his side, and letting her go?

                She knows what happens, when an Archangel as old and as powerful as Klaus becomes obsessed with another.  She knows the madness they fall to, and how they will not let that person go.  She had seen it firsthand.

                Klaus won’t let her go… but Bonnie is looking terrified, and so she grants her the only answer that will offer any relief.

                “We’ll have to wait and see.”


	3. Human

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here is Part 3... where the plot really begins to take off. Let me know what you think.

                “He isn’t here.”  


                Elijah doesn’t reply to Kol’s statement.  He’s never been the type to respond to statements of the obvious.  Instead, he walks across the floor of the bar that Niklaus made his home base and looks around.  There is no sign of the other Archangel, nor has the place been touched by the Reborn that so recently overran the city.

                “Where is he?” he says at last, his words addressed to a shadowed corner.  Stefan steps out, his gaze level on the nine Archangels that stand shoulder-to-shoulder in front of him.

                “Stefan,” Rebekah greets, her voice suddenly much lighter than it has been since she heard news of Niklaus’ dark proclivities.  She and Stefan have a long history, most of it spent between the sheets of a bed, and it’s no secret that she would welcome him back again.

                “Archangel,” Stefan replies neutrally, and the smile falls from Rebekah’s lips, her eyes narrowing at the other angel’s lack of emotion.  “The Sire is currently indisposed.  But I will let him know that you came to visit.”

                “We’re not here to visit, Stefan,” says Celeste, her dark hair crackling around her with her power.  Stefan looks at her with a solemn expression, and for a brief moment, Elijah thinks the boy might actually challenge them.

                Thankfully, he shows more sense than the Archangel he serves, and simply gives his head the smallest of bows.

                “I’m afraid I cannot show you to where he is,” he says at last, his last ditch show of loyalty, and it makes Kol step forward with a wicked cackle.

                “Oh, then I’ll simply _take_ the information we need.  You see, Nik’s been very naughty, Stefan.  And as such, well…” the smirk goes from wicked to downright _vicious_ , “we need to kill him now.”

                “Now, Kol, where did your manners go to?”

                As one, the nine members of the Cadre turn to where their tenth has appeared.  Niklaus looks as he ever has, dressed in simple jeans and a black t-shirt.  Elijah searches for any sign of rot beneath his skin, the rot of which Caroline had spoken.  When she had landed in London, her eyes had been rimmed in red, and she had shook with fear.

                Elijah hadn’t seen her like that, not in close to 700 years, when Lorenzo had saved her from Damon.  That makes Elijah think of what had come later – the _gifts_ Niklaus had sent, that Caroline never mentioned, but of which Elijah had been very aware.  For 700 years, there had been a tangible connection between the Archangel and Elijah’s Spymistress… yet something had sent Caroline fleeing from him as she never had before.

                “You watch me with such distrustful eyes, Elijah,” Niklaus says, stepping forward.  He smirks when Kiernan and Genevieve both take nervous steps back.  As younger members of the Cadre, they have no doubt who would win in a fight between them and Niklaus, who steps behind the bar and pour himself a drink.  “Caroline has been telling tales.”

                He pours scotch into a glass and holds it towards Elijah, who merely raises a brow, otherwise ignoring the overture.  Klaus shrugs, as though to say _suit yourself_ , and sips from the glass.  He ignores the others, and Elijah knows why.  Of all ten members of the Cadre, only he comes close to Niklaus in age and power.  The others are like ants to him – weak and insignificant.

                It’s part of what makes Niklaus’ lasting interest in Caroline so odd.

                “She told us that your creations turned on you, Nik,” Rebekah says, and unlike the others who keep their distance, she moves forward, to sit on one of the barstools.  Elijah might be the one Niklaus respects, but Rebekah is the one that has always treated him like a beloved elder brother.  “Yet here you sit, looking perfectly fine.  Perhaps Elijah’s precious Flower is losing her touch.”

                Niklaus’ eyes flash at Rebekah’s set down, and Elijah puts that observation away for later, to be taken out and considered when he has more time to do so.  But for right now, he must focus on Niklaus.

                Because Kol did not speak lies – they had indeed come to kill him.

                “Ah, my Reborn.  They require some more work before they reach the perfection for which I strive.” Niklaus holds his glass up, considering the amber liquid, as though he hadn’t just admitted to creating abominations that nearly ravaged his city.  Only Stefan’s quick thinking and quicker actions kept that possibility from becoming reality, yet Niklaus acts as though it were a minor annoyance.

                “So you admit it, then?  That you raised the dead to use as weapons?” it’s Genevieve’s smoky purr that speaks that.  For all that she fears Niklaus, she also has a power hungry streak, and Elijah can already see her imagining what she’ll do with her share of the lands they would split up, when Niklaus leaves the earth.

                “I never hid it, Love,” Niklaus replies, and Elijah can tell he just barely refrains from rolling his eyes, and it reminds him once more of the connection between the other man and Caroline.  She does that often, rolls her eyes, though Elijah doesn’t think she realizes it.  He wonders if she picked that habit up from Niklaus, and then curses himself for thinking of her at all in a time like this.

                But she has been ever loyal, and he dislikes knowing that his reasons for being in New Orleans cause her pain.

                _“We cannot allow him to live.”_

_“I’m not a child to be coddled, Sire.  I know what has to be done.”_

_“You will grieve for him.”_

_“I will grieve for the Niklaus I once knew.”_

They called her his Flower, yet Elijah knew that most everyone that meets Caroline underestimates her.  Everyone but the man currently watching him with calculating eyes and an enigmatic smirk that touches his lips and nothing else. 

                “Did she tell you that she agreed to become my Consort?” Niklaus asks, and the surprise of his words nearly stun Elijah.  He doesn’t have to ask of whom the other man speaks, because there is only one _she_ Niklaus would refer to in that tone.

                “She neglected to tell me of that,” Elijah replies slowly, and he doesn’t quite know why.  Caroline has her secrets, forged in a childhood of which she will not speak, and of which no one knows the details.  But she has never kept important information from him before.

                This would count as important.

                “Oh, I imagine she doesn’t think she’ll be held to her promise.  After all, as Kol pointed out you’re here to kill me.  Perhaps she thought it would all disappear.  Your delicate Flower” – Niklaus’ expression is almost bitter as he comes out from behind the bar – “ _my_ Little Fledgling.  And she is _mine_ , Elijah.  She made her vows, and I will hold her to them.”

                “Don’t tell me all of this was because of some _child_ , Niklaus,” Celeste sneers, and her pretty face is a haughty mask.  Of them all, she is the one most wrapped up in her own grandeur, viewing herself as a Goddess among her people.  Niklaus chuckles at her expression, turning her sneer into a snarl of anger, for being so looked down upon.

                “I suppose we must forgive her.  Celeste has always been too caught up in delusions of her own power to realize the world around her has moved on.  But if you’re here to kill me, you had best get your attempts over with” – he gives Stefan a sharp nod.  The other angel doesn’t move at first, but Niklaus’ expression turns severe, and with a nearly mutinous expression, the man leaves the bar – “I have other things I must do.”

                “This ends here,” Finn says, his deep voice rumbling in the bar. 

                Niklaus spreads his wings and smirks at them all, as though they are mere toys there for his amusement.

                “By all means, then.  Let us end this.”

                And then the world around them explodes.

\---

                “You look so very serious.”

                Caroline looks up from the e-mails she is answering at the sound of Katherine’s voice.  She has come out to the gardens Elijah had made for his consort to find some peace, but not even this place can calm her turbulent heart.

                “I would have thought you would be more worried,” she says as Katherine comes and sits next to her on the stone bench.  She does say anything at first, both of them simply staring out at the gardens.  Then Caroline turns her attention back to her computer, the only sound besides the water in the fountains the soft tapping of the keyboard.

                “I am terrified,” Katherine finally says, her voice so soft that Caroline has to stop and be silent for a moment herself, just to be sure she actually heard anything.  “Niklaus is the oldest of the all.”

                There are a thousand platitudes Caroline could use to calm the fear she can now see present in Katherine’s eyes.  But while lies fall so easily from her lips, she has always kept the ones she spoke to the woman that gave her a home to a minimum.  She knows that it wasn’t simply out of the good of her heart that Katherine took her in, but political reasons aside, Katherine has been a good mistress to serve.

                “There is no news yet,” Caroline finally says, settling for what little she can give Katherine.

                “You called all your people out of Niklaus’ territory.  You wouldn’t know even if there was,” Katherine replies with a rueful twist of her lips.  Caroline knows Katherine doesn’t entirely approve of her actions, not when information is more important now than ever…

                But she hadn’t seen Niklaus, that day amongst his Reborn.  Katherine hadn’t experienced the madness and the rot that lay beneath the gleaming surface of New Orleans, threatening to taint everything around it.  No, it had only been Caroline to see it all.

                And it had terrified her.

                “I have spies elsewhere,” Caroline says at last, trying to shake off the memory of Niklaus and his reborn, but their rot doesn’t want to leave her, and it makes it difficult to breathe.  She feels as though she’s lost something, though she doesn’t know what.

                “You will truly grieve for him, won’t you?”

                Caroline’s head snaps to Katherine at her words, and there’s something in the other woman’s dark eyes, something that very few ever get to see.

                Empathy.

                If Elijah is staid and reliable, then his consort is a tempestuous storm that thrives on intrigue.  To the outside, she is ruthless, even cruel, and even to Caroline she has very rarely shown this softer side of her.  But she reaches out her hand and strokes Caroline’s cheek, and she finds herself turning into the touch.  It’s Katherine’s most deceptive gift, this ability to make others crave the feel of her skin, but in this moment she uses it purely for comfort.

                “The Archangel Niklaus is not a good man, my little Flower.  He is not worth those shadows I see in your eyes.”

                “700 years might seem just a blink to you, but it’s most of my life.  And he has always been there.” It’s as close as Caroline will come to letting herself admit that Katherine speaks the truth, that she will mourn for Klaus when he dies.  It causes Katherine to purse her lips, a furrow forming between her eyes.

                “Perhaps,” she says at last, her words coming out slowly, “perhaps it’s time that I told you the story of my history with him.”

                The words make Caroline go unnaturally still.  In all her time, she has never been able to uncover the truth of Katherine and Klaus’ mutual hatred.  No matter how she dug, no matter whose ear she whispered into, it remained a secret, lost to time and fear of the beings to whom it belonged.

                “It all begins with my sister,” Katherine begins, her hand moving to stroke Caroline’s hair.  She doesn’t seem entirely cognizant of what she is doing, so Caroline allows the soft touch.

                “Elena?” Caroline asks, unable to stop herself.  The Refuge’s healer couldn’t be more different from the sister to whom she is almost identical, and Caroline can’t imagine the gentle woman ever getting on Klaus’ bad side.  Katherine gives her a tight lipped look that says she isn’t pleased with the interruption, and Caroline flushes lightly, bowing her head in apology.

                “No, not Elena.  My little sister has ever been a spineless little mouse.  Niklaus would never look twice at her” – the words are acerbic, but not entirely unexpected.  Katherine and Elena have never been close, at least not in Caroline’s memory – “it was Tatia.  My twin.”

                Caroline has to bite her tongue at those words, the shock nearly making her jolt.  It’s only centuries of hiding her emotions that keeps her surprise hidden.  Not just because she hadn’t realized Katherine _had_ a twin, but also because twins were so rare among their people.  Births in general were rare… but for two children to be born at once?

                It was very nearly unheard of.

                “Shocking, isn’t it?  You’d think that everyone would know, since it’s so rare.  But Niklaus made sure that even the mere mention of Tatia’s name was forgotten.” Katherine’s fingers tighten for a moment in Caroline’s hair, and she has to bite back a wince.  “You are her utter opposite.  Light to her dark, so very contained.  Tatia was a storm, a force of nature.  She always got what she wanted, and what she wanted was Niklaus.”

                Caroline refuses to admit to the pang of jealousy she feels.  A twin… she would imagine that she and Katherine looked very much alike, if not identical, and Katherine is one of the angel’s greatest beauties, her and Elena both, with their dark eyes and hair and clear skin.  It’s incredibly easy, to imagine a Katherine look alike in Klaus’ arms, and Caroline clenches her hands into fists and curses her own foolishness.

                That there is such animosity between Katherine and Klaus says that this story doesn’t end happily.

                “How did they meet?” Caroline asks softly, when Katherine lapses into a brooding silence, clearly caught up in memory.

                “We lived in his territory.  It was our father’s home.  We were newly out of sanctuary, and Klaus was already Archangel, though he hadn’t been for long at that point.  Tatia was charming, and she set out to charm him.  She was successful” – Katherine drags her gaze to Caroline, and now there’s a weight to it, as though she’s comparing Caroline and Tatia.  Caroline says nothing, just meets her gaze and waits.  Katherine’s lips twist ruefully before she continues – “Klaus was different then.  He was more… not human.  Human, well none of us are that, are we?  But he was… _more_.  Softer, maybe.”

                Caroline can’t imagine Klaus being soft, except…

                _He drags his fingers down her bared skin, and she arches into his touch.  It’s so very different from what Damon’s had been, and Caroline finds herself reveling in this pleasure, rather than the pain that had been her previous experience._

_“Exquisite,” he murmurs, his words a rumble against her skin._

_He moves with almost painful slowness, until Caroline is gasping and desperate for_ more _.  But never once does he move quicker, never once does his soft touch grow stronger, not even when she begs for it._

_There is a gentleness in him that she hadn’t realized Klaus was capable of._

The rush of memory hits her and she has to set her laptop aside, or risk it sliding to the ground.  It had been decades after Damon, that she had finally given into Klaus’ seductions, but still he had taken his time, careful to eliminate every memory of his touch until there was only the pleasure of Klaus’ left.

                And maybe it wasn’t the softness of which Katherine spoke… but never before that moment had Caroline felt so _safe_ , and hadn’t that been a shock, when she had always been so sure that safety was the one thing Klaus could never offer her.

                “They became lovers,” Katherine said, drawing Caroline’s gaze back to her.  “And then everyone believed that he would make her his consort.”

                “You didn’t,” Caroline says, because there’s a twist to Katherine’s expression.  One that said exactly what she thought of the expectations her sister had formed.

                “He might have been softer, but he was still Klaus.  Still driven by power and ambition.  I begged Tatia to leave, to come with me back to Refuge.  Elena was just a baby then, and I tried to use that, to get her to visit with me.  But Tatia was a fool, and she had fallen in love with Niklaus” – her gaze zeroes in on Caroline’s face, and something there must give away her violent internal reaction to those words, because Katherine laughs without humor – “does that hurt you, Flower?  To hear that another came before you?  Niklaus is eons old, you are hardly the first.”

                “ _I_ am not a fool,” Caroline replies softly, stroking a hand over her laptop on the bench next to her.  “I know how old he is.  I know I am not the first to intrigue him.”

                “No, you’re not.  There have been others,” Katherine’s expression is contemplative.  “And yet you are the first… because none have inspired such reactions in you.  But that is no gift, Caroline.  The very things you inspire in Klaus will drive him to destroy you.  I know this.”

                Katherine has ever been tempestuous, and somehow it had always made her seem younger than her millennia, yet in that moment, Caroline was reminded that there were few older than her.  It was a soul deep sadness in her voice and eyes and that made Caroline’s heart break, and her heart fill with dread.  Because the story isn’t done yet.

                Caroline doesn’t know that she wishes to know how it ends.

                “What happened to her?” she asks when Katherine says nothing.  “To Tatia?”

                “Klaus realized that he felt a hint of something for her – not love, he had never fallen to that weakness, but perhaps a potential for it.  So he killed her.”

                Caroline says nothing, because she can’t.  She wants to apologize, to reach out and comfort Katherine, but all platitudes are stuck in her throat, and she can’t breathe around them.

                “He killed my twin, and would have killed me, just to ensure there was no potential for weakness.  Except that I had made friends, and they assisted me in my escape.  He killed them as well.”

                They fall into silence, Katherine still lost in the memory of a sister she had lost, and Caroline lost in thoughts of the monster that she had let into her bed… and how even after Katherine’s story, she would still grieve for him.

                “I was never under any illusions as to what he was,” she says after a long moment.  “Niklaus.  I always knew.”

                “And still you will grieve for him?”

                Caroline thinks of gentle touches, and words murmured against skin.  She think of his eyes, and a feather that she had worn in her hair for nearly a year, until it became too ratty to continue doing so.

                Each time after their first meeting, he had given her another, as though he liked to see a piece of himself in her hair.

                “Grief… it’s never a sensible emotion.”

                Perhaps Katherine would have replied to that, but Caroline’s computer chose that moment to ping, marking an incoming video call.  When Alaric’s face fills the screen, Caroline prepares herself for the news.

                When it comes, it’s a surprise blow to the gut.

                “Kiernan is dead.”

\---

                The Archangels have fled New Orleans.

                Elijah’s territory is the closest, while still putting an ocean between themselves and Niklaus, so that’s where they land.  Katherine is in his arms almost immediately, and then recoils when she feels him flinch beneath her touch.

                “He hurt you,” she says, and there is a fiery anger in her dark eyes.

                “He incapacitated me so that he could send us a message,” Elijah corrects softly, because for all that his ribs have never hurt like this before, he does know that Niklaus could have done far worse.

                _Did_ do far worse to Kiernan.

                “How did he manage to defeat all nine of you?” Caroline asks.  She had followed Katherine more sedately, and now her eyes look over them all with an icy calm that Elijah hasn’t seen on her face in centuries.  Not since those first years after Damon.

                “You didn’t tell us how powerful he was, _Flower_ ,” Genevieve spits out viciously.  Caroline doesn’t say anything in return.  Though she knows there is potential in her to someday be more powerful than the other Archangel, she isn’t there yet, and she has no desire to die by way of vicious Harpy.

                “He was still recovering from his Reborn,” Caroline frowns, troubled by all of this.  “This shouldn’t have been possible.”

                “Are you sure you didn’t simply set us up for failure?” Celeste’s voice doesn’t hold the same vitriol as Genevieve’s, but there is still the suspicion there.  “It’s no secret that you and Niklaus are… _close_.”

                “We’re fair weather bed partners,” Caroline replies bluntly, knowing that attempting to beat around the bush in this moment will get her nowhere.  “But he’s always known where my allegiances lie.”

                “Ah, but the fact that you’re his consort changes things.”

                Kol’s light hearted tone is at odds with the far colder look in his eyes, and his words make Caroline freeze.  When she had returned from New Orleans, terrified and panicked, the last thing on her mind had been that promise to Klaus.  Once she had calmed down long enough to think, she had kept her silence on the matter, however.

                To keep her place in Elijah’s court?  Or because thinking of Klaus, when she knew the fate that would inevitably await him…

                Katherine meets her gaze from her place in Elijah’s arms, and there is cool understanding in her gaze.  Their conversation remains at the front of Caroline’s mind.

                _You will truly grieve for him, won’t you?_

Except Klaus still lives, another Archangel’s life taken instead.  Yet still, Caroline grieves.  Not because he has killed Kiernan – Archangels are ever in battles over power.  Able only to kill each other, the members of the Cadre can never quite be considered friends.  Just borderline allies at the very best.  So no, she doesn’t grieve because of Kiernan… she grieves because this means that Klaus still lives, but it’s the Klaus that isn’t…

                She still remembers that rot, and doesn’t think she’ll ever quite be able to forget it.

                “I fail to see how an agreement made under duress before I realized the depths to which he had… before I realized what he had truly been doing… I fail to see why it matters.”

                “Then you’re a fool,” says Shelia, her eyes solemn when they focus on Caroline, making her feel about an inch tall.  “And we both know you’re not a fool… _Little Flower_.”

                “I swear I didn’t know how powerful he was,” Caroline says, turning her gaze to Elijah.  She feels frustrated, and fights to hide the emotion, knowing that to show it in front of the entire Cadre would be a bad idea.  But frustration is strong, because sensing power has always been one of her greatest gifts, yet somehow Niklaus had kept his hidden from her. 

                “And that just _galls_ you, doesn’t it?” asks Genevieve with a smirk that rankles.  The red head has never liked Caroline, having set her gaze on Niklaus, only to be shoved out of his bed when he finally seduced Caroline into it.

                “Genevieve,” Elijah says, his voice a warning, before he addresses Caroline.  “I believe you, Caroline.  Your loyalty has never been in question…. But the fact remains that this does in fact change the situation.  Niklaus… he is far more powerful than any of us knew.  I fear he may be as powerful as…”

                Elijah trails off, his gaze focused on Caroline, his expression tight.

                “Silas,” Caroline replies through numb lips.  “You might as well say it, Sire.  You fear that Niklaus is as powerful as my father was, before he went to his Sleep.”

                “Yes,” Elijah replies.  “Yes, I do.  And he will not let you go.”

                _It will be war_ , was left unspoken, but Caroline was very much aware of it.  She knew, after all, what happened when an Ancient became so obsessed with another.

                “You will be our peace offering,” Rebekah intones, ignoring Elijah’s unimpressed look.  “If Nik has you to distract him, then he will perhaps decide to not hand Kiernan’s fate to each of us.”

                “He can’t simply kill you without a declaration of war,” Katherine says with a scowl.  “Not even Niklaus would risk being a pariah by attacking like that.”

                It was true.  There were certain rules that the angels had followed since even before the time of Caroline’s parents, and as the eldest of the Cadre, Niklaus held to them even more firmly than most.  It was what kept the abrasive Klaus polite when in open company.

                “The fact remains that we need time, Katerina,” Elijah says, and Caroline hadn’t realized she’d held onto hope that her might protect her from the others, until she knew that it wouldn’t be happening.  “And Caroline can grant us that.”

                Caroline swallows, because this place that has been her home for so long, suddenly feels as strange.  She steps away from the group to look out the window, and then she freezes.

                There is something wrong with the sky.

                “Caroline?” Elijah prompts when she remains silent.  Then she feels his warm presence at her back, and can hear his breath catch in his throat.

                The sky is roiling, the regular dark storm clouds mixed with greens and red that leave the sky looking unhealthy.  And then the rain begins to fall.

                It hits the window, and Caroline reaches out to touch the glass.  Because that is not clear rain.

                It is red.

                “What is that?” Finn demands as the other members of the Cadre join them.

                “It’s blood,” Caroline says through numb lips, a new power scenting the air, one that makes Caroline’s hair rise and leaves her feeling sick.  This power… she _knows_ this power.  It’s not as powerful as it once was, but it’s there, and she wishes it wasn’t.

                And this, more than anything, changes things.  At least for Caroline.

                The Cadre cannot afford to be at odds, not with this portent.

                “I’ll do it,” she says turning to Elijah.  “I will be his consort.”

\---

                “You can’t do this.”

                Caroline smiles slightly when her door bursts open, admitting Bonnie into her room.  It had taken the vampire longer than Caroline had expected; part of her had been waiting for her to come for the last ten minutes.

                The rooms look different than they had 700 years ago, when she first joined Elijah’s court as Katherine’s lady-in-waiting.  Not just because times have changed, but because back then Caroline had kept her rooms bare, afraid that the tiny baubles that one tended to accumulate would weigh her to one spot.  But as time had moved on, she had grown to feel safe of her space.  Somehow, she seemed to have a thousand tiny little things that made her think of fond memories.

                She shouldn’t have let herself form those roots.   Now that she’ll have to leave them behind, it hurts.  She knows she can’t view this as a betrayal on Elijah’s part.  He’s doing what he must to keep his people safe, to keep the _world_ safe… but maybe there’s still a part of Caroline that’s so mired in childhood pain and betrayal, and that part is screaming.  Screaming that she should have known better.  Screaming that Elijah and Katherine never cared.

                “I really have no option, Bonnie.  Kiernan is dead because Niklaus is too powerful.  The rest of the Cadre couldn’t bring him down, and now they’re down a member.  Now we must do a balancing act, and all of us must play our part in maintaining that balance.”

                “I was here when you came back the last time.  You don’t show emotion to the world, Caroline, but that day?  Everyone could tell how terrified you were.  And now you’ll walk right back into his arms?”

                The reminder makes Caroline shiver.  Niklaus and his Reborn and the rot of it all, and she clutches at her bedding, her breath catching in panic.  She can’t allow this, can’t allow herself to have such a weakness.

                Not now.

                “I’m coming with you,” Bonnie says, determination casting shadows over her face, but Caroline is shaking her head before the vampire finishes speaking.

                “You can’t,” she replies, and when Bonnie looks to argue, Caroline steps closer, letting her power flare out.  “I have an intricate network of spies that are loyal to me.  _Only me_.  This is going to cause an uproar in it, and the only way to calm that is to have you take over operations in my stead.  You know this, Bonnie.  If we both disappear, my people will rabbit.”

                Bonnie can’t argue that, but Caroline can practically feel the violent emotions that leave the other woman all but vibrating with frustrations.  Much longer, and Bonnie won’t be able to hold that anger in.

                “Walk with me,” she says to Bonnie, motioning toward the balcony.  Bonnie’s expression is mutinous, and Caroline half expects her to deny the request.  But with a twist to her lips, she pushes out onto the balcony, and Caroline follows, letting the vampire prowl across the vampire with a restless energy. 

                “Do you remember when I Made you?” Caroline asks after a moment, making Bonnie stop in her pacing to look at her incredulously.

                “Of course I remember,” she replies.  “I never thought I would be grateful for murder… but when you killed Kai?  I don’t think I’ve ever thanked you for that.”

                “You gave me your loyalty,” Caroline replies, leaning on the edge of the balcony.  “That is more thanks than any empty words.  But do you remember what I said to you, when I began the change?”

                “You told me to trust you,” Bonnie replies, and she’s caged that restless energy enough to join Caroline at the edge of the balcony.  “I remember thinking you were rather arrogant, because you didn’t ask.  It was a demand. And despite thinking you were arrogant, I _did_.  I trusted you.”

                “Yes, you did,” Caroline agrees.  The skies are no longer that eerie storm cloud, and the energy that had sparked the air as blood fell is gone, but its imprint remains.  The Cadre had said it must be a portent of the Cascade, but Caroline knows better.  That energy… that energy could only belong to one person, and though it’s died down now, she knows what it must mean.

                Ancients are awakening.

                “Trust me,” she says, turning to Bonnie.  It’s not a request, but a demand, just as it had been all those centuries ago, when she had refused to let such a beautiful spark of life be snuffed out by the sadistic desires of Kai. 

                Bonnie looks at her and reaches out, her hand clasping Caroline’s in a desperately tight grip.

                “You know something.  Something you’re not telling anyone,” she says, and her eyes are wary.  It reminds Caroline, that they’ve been together for most of their lives.  No one knows her as Bonnie does, not even Niklaus.  He might see the potential in her better than anyone, but Bonnie has always seen to her very _soul_ , and it’s that, that has Caroline squeezing her hand back.

                “The world is going to change, Bonnie,” Caroline says, looking to the horizon once more.  She imagines that she can feel that power awakening out there somewhere, so attuned to her own, and it makes her heart skip a beat.  “We all have to play our parts if we want to survive.  The Cadre needs to be united… and if that means I go to Klaus, then I will.”

                “He’s like a disease for you,” Bonnie replies.  “He always has been.  Even before we met, he was already under your skin, wasn’t he?”

                “For 700 years.”

                Only to Bonnie will she show such candor, and only Bonnie will she allow to hug her.  No one else will ever see Caroline like this, fingers clutching the other woman’s back tightly, holding on like a lifeline.  Because everything that is happening… Caroline doesn’t know that she will have the strength she needs to survive it.  Because it all comes back to the only two men that could ever make her break.

                Her Niklaus.

                And her father.

\---

                It’s Stefan that greets her when she lands in Klaus’ territory.  The bar that had previously been his center of operations is no more.  In fact, the aftermath of a battle between Archangels is the near decimation of the entire city.

                “What are you doing here?”

                His appearance doesn’t surprise her as she knows it’s meant to.  But Stefan too easily forgets that Caroline is – _was_ – Elijah’s spymistress. For all that her wings ensure she will never be able to live in the shadows herself, she’s very familiar with those that do.  Caroline knows that Stefan is one of the best when it comes to gathering information, but she’s dealt with others that are as good.

                “You know why I’m here,” she says in return, never removing her gaze from the destruction in front of her. 

                _Protection of our people is the most important thing._

_Mama says –_

_Your mother is wise, but in this she is wrong.  There is_ nothing _more important than keeping those under our protection safe._

It’s been almost 800 years since she last spoke to him, but it amazes Caroline, the clarity with which she can remember her father’s voice.  She sees Stefan appear in her peripheral, and is reminded that he was born in that same lands.  He has the look of her father’s people, the look of her father, with that auburn hair.  Caroline had always taken more after her mother in appearance.

                She likes to believe that’s all she has of Elizabeth.

                She hugs her arms around herself, and hopes that Stefan merely thinks it’s nerves over the meeting that she’s about to have.  And part of it is.  The last time she had seen Niklaus, she had nearly become the victim of his Reborn, had watched them converge on their master.  There had been very little of the man she… _cared_ for.  He had been too far gone to his madness.

                But that’s not why she hugs herself, not really.  The scent of power in the air, even here, has brought memories to the forefront of her mind that she doesn’t want to remember.

                _“She is our daughter~”_

_“She is_ your _daughter.  You made sure of that.  And now she’ll die for it.”_

_And through it all, she tried to flee, tried to fight, but chains bit into young wings, grounding her.  There was no escape, there was only hopelessness._

_And then there would be death._

She fights back the bile in her throat.  She’s seen destruction like this before, as well.  The destruction of when Archangels fight.  Niklaus is not the first to care nothing for those under his protection.

                Elizabeth hadn’t either. And in her mind, she no longer sees the destruction of New Orleans.  Instead it’s Otukan, and the little girl inside her cries out in despair at the memories that threaten to consume her.

                “I thought you fled like a little puppy,” Stefan’s voice cuts through her dark thoughts and brings her back to New Orleans.  She closes her eyes for a moment, forcefully shoving away her last memories of Otukan, and when she looks at him once more, any emotion that might have betrayed her is hidden.  “Let me guess, they sent you back as a sacrifice on the Sire’s altar?”

                “Can you blame them?” Caroline asks in return.  “We both know he’s gone quite mad.”

                “If he’s so far gone, then we’re all doomed.”

                Caroline doesn’t reply to that, because what is there to say?  Stefan’s words are truth, and they both know it.  If Caroline can’t somehow bring Klaus back to himself, then they might as well all give themselves up for dead, or hope that she can buy enough time for the rest of the Cadre to figure out how to kill him.

                Only that won’t happen, Caroline knows.  Now that the dust has settled, the Arch Angels are playing politics once more.  Her people have already told her that Genevieve seeks Klaus out for an alliance, while Marcel and Celeste form alliances to barricade themselves from the rest.  Finn might throw in with them, or he might accept Kol’s overtures.  Rebekah will heel to Klaus at the first sign he gives that he’s willing to work with her.  And with Kiernan dead, land will have to be parceled out, unless someone Ascends and lays claim to what he ruled.

                Only Elijah and Shelia keep their own council so far, and even that will only last so far.  Neither particularly likes to play politics, but they can and will.

                And all of this happening with a Cascade and the chances of an Ancient awakening. The world is a mess, and Caroline fears that any success she might be able to make at bringing Klaus back to his sanity will be made moot by what’s to come.

                “Where is he?”

                “He rests,” Stefan replies.  “After all, successfully defeating nine other Archangels is no small feat.”

                “You shouldn’t be admitting such weakness to me,” Caroline comments.  The burial of the dead is still in progress, and Caroline can see the half-burnt corpse of a child.  One hand is untouched by the power that had destroyed the city, and it clutches at a stuffed bunny that is only slightly scorched.  The sight has bile threatening to rise in her throat.  Children are precious.

                “Yet they’re so often collateral damage in wars,” Stefan replies with agreement in his voice, and Caroline realizes she had spoken aloud.  But Stefan’s eyes when he looks at the girl are almost sad and he walks over to the corpse, Caroline on his heels.  Her eyes are still open – or at least eye.  Half her face has been burned down to bone, but the other side still has skin, and the eye that stares blankly up at the sky is green.  Stefan reaches out and closes it.  “I tell you about Klaus, because you’re his consort.  That means he has your loyalty.”

                “Do you really believe that?”

                “I believe that I watched the two of you for 700 years, and that you are the only one that might be able to keep the Sire stable.  I also believe that you care for him” – Stefan gets to his feet and looks at her.  His gaze is cold and implacable, and she sees shadows of Damon in his face, making her shiver and reminding her that rumors say Damon’s dark proclivities were not just limited to one brother, that Stefan is capable of terrible, gruesome things as well – “I _know_ that if you do betray him, I will kill you.”

                “You will try,” Caroline replies, because when it comes down to the very basics of who they are, she is the more powerful, though he might be older.  “Take me to my consort.”

                Niklaus is in a mansion outside the war zone of the city.  Stefan had said he was resting, but he’s very much awake when Caroline enters.  She is alone, Stefan having turned around to return to what is left of the city.

                “I was wondering when you would arrive.”

                He doesn’t look entirely well.  His skin is paler than it should be, his eyes looking almost sunken.  And those eyes are _angry_ , and it makes Caroline wary, because she doesn’t know to whom that anger is directed.

                “I am your Consort.  This is my place.”

                Klaus’ grating laughter isn’t quite right.  She’s heard his different kinds of laughter before, and this is different.  It sends a chill throughout her and brings to mind the sound of torture and anguish. 

                “You couldn’t leave quickly enough before.  Don’t try to fool me, Caroline – we both know that you’re the Cadre’s sacrifice.  Send me the pretty Little Fledgling, and maybe I won’t kill them all as I killed poor Kiernan.”

                His words are cold and harsh and part of Caroline wants to flee.  Yet when he holds his hand out to her, motioning for her to come, the larger part of her goes, because it feels so natural.  Even when he doesn’t feel right, touching him, being touched _by_ him, does.  He tugs her down to sit on a settee with him, and runs his fingers through her wings, tugging away loose feathers and grooming them.  She waits for the lecture, because he always lectures her on wing care.

                “You need to take better care of them.  Disregarding such beauty… it should be criminal.”

                The words make her close her eyes and let out a soft chuckle, and then she turns so that she faces him and cups his face in her hands.  She searches his features for the darkness, the rot, that had been there when she last seen him.  She thinks she can maybe see hints of it in his eyes, but not as it had been before.  Not enough to make the chills override the urge to touch him, so she presses her lips to his in a soft kiss.

                “I don’t want a lamb to the slaughter, Caroline,” he tells her when she pulls back.  His gaze is cold, and Caroline begins to pull away, but Klaus grasps her hand, keeping it against his cheek.  “You ran from me.”

                “You terrified me.  You and those monstrous Reborn.  I won’t… _I can’t_ stay and watch you make them.”

                “And if I don’t?” His eyes are enigmatic as he asks, turning his face into her palm and grazing it with a kiss.  “If I promise to make no more, will you stop looking at me with such fear?”

                Something in her chest loosens at his words.  Niklaus has never broken a promise to her.  And she knows, just _knows_ , that if she can distance him from making those terrible creatures, then she’ll be able to rid him of the rot with enough time.

                “Swear it,” she replies.  “Swear it, and I won’t be the lamb to slaughter.  I’ll be your Consort in all ways.”

                “I swear it.”

                “Why?” And she has to ask that, because she knows him, and he might care for her in some ways – and she thinks of Katherine’s story, and pushes away dark whispers that tell her being cared for by this man will just mean her death – but he cares for no one enough to give up power.  And for all their rot, the Reborn _were_ a type of power.  “I won’t believe it’s merely because I ask.”

                “They weren’t what I had hoped they’d be” – and there is the Klaus she knows, in that simple shrug, that says he didn’t have immediate plans to make Reborn to begin with, and that she had given him everything he wanted for something he was going to cease anyway – “but you?  You are rarely ever a disappointment.”

                A compliment on the surface, but hidden beneath it was a meaning Caroline understood very well.  She was rarely ever a disappointment, which meant she _had_ been one before… when she fled him.  When she fled the power he offered her.

                Being a disappointment again wouldn’t be acceptable.

                It’s a stark reminder that by his standards, she’s still so young, and the difference between _almost_ immortal and fully immortal has never been so stark in her mind.  She is _almost_ immortal, and that almost means she might as well be human, for how easily Klaus could destroy her.

                _This is the man she cares for._

Never has she felt so foolish.  Never has she felt so torn.

                She presses her lips to his again, but this time there is nothing gentle in the kiss.  She doesn’t want to think of him killing her as he had Tatia.  She wants, for just this moment, to imagine that there is some hope of happiness for her, if she can just be enough for him.

                The whispers in the back of her head she will never be enough for him won’t silence, so instead she drowns them out by opening her body to him.

\---

                He can taste the desperation in her kiss, and hopes that she’s distracted enough by her own to not taste his own.

                He had known they would send her to him as their peace offering… yet somehow when she had first appeared in the mansion he now call home, he hadn’t quite believed it.  Only he knew it couldn’t be a dream.

                He didn’t dream… he hardly slept.  But even if he did, he knows he would never dream of that fear that shadowed her eyes.

                He wants her lust, her passion… he wants every piece of her, but never has he wanted her _fear_.

                And that’s the core of the anger that still burns deep within his stomach.  That Elijah, to whom she has always shown the loyalty Klaus so coveted, has simply handed her over like so much garbage?  It makes him want to rage.  Caroline has so much potential within her, deserves to be treated so much better… but he won’t let her go.

                He presses her back on the settee.  She’s chosen to wear jeans and a tank top today rather than her usual sun dresses, and it irritates him that she’s so covered.  But he pushes her shirt up as he kisses along her stomach, holding her hips in place.   Her skin is smooth, completely unblemished, and when he licks it, she tastes of salt and _her_ , and it just makes him hungrier to have her.

                “We should talk about what happened before,” Caroline tells him tugging him up so that they’re eye to eye.  Words no one ever wants hear – _we should talk_ – and were Klaus another man, he might have groaned.  Instead, he claims her lips in a heated kiss, wrapping her legs around his waist.  For all her claims to need to talk, she seems perfectly content to kiss him back, her arms wrapped around his neck.

                Then she pushes on his chest, and as he always does, he goes, allowing her to push away and retreat to the other end of the couch.  She pulls her legs up to her chest and hugs her arms around them, and she stares at him, looking so very young.

                “What is it that you wish to speak of?” he asks with a heavy sigh.  He stretches out his leg, so his toes touch her leg, and though it’s not the touch he wants, it’s better than the distance that had been between them.

                “My duties.  I know what Katherine does… but what will you expect me to do?”

                “Be yourself, Love.  I simply want _you_.”

                “Romantic,” Caroline replies with a rueful smirk.  “But it doesn’t answer my question.”

                Klaus blinks at her and is silent for a moment, because it _was_ romantic… she _made_ him romantic.  He couldn’t remember the last time that happened to him.

                A voice whispers a traitorous name in the back of his mind, but Klaus ignores it.  Tatia was when he was far younger, a new Arch Angel really.  He had still been susceptible to mortal weaknesses back then.  Caroline… Caroline is nothing like Tatia.

                “We are angels, Caroline.  We do not have to know everything in this moment” – he reaches out and strokes her hair out of her face – “there are far better ways to spend this time. I want to remove that look of fear I saw.”

                “Are you able to manipulate emotions, now?” Caroline replies, but there’s more amusement than anything in her gaze, and it makes Klaus chuckle, relieves a stress that had been building within him.  This is Caroline, whom he has coveted in so many ways for 700 years, and when he tugs her over to straddle his lap, there’s something comforting in how easily she strokes her hand through his hair.

                “There is a lot of work,” she says, her voice soft.  “New Orleans… it’s destroyed.  There were innocent people.”

                Klaus had seen it, of course.  And though he doesn’t regret what he had to do, he does regret the damage done to his territory.  It’s not what Caroline means, but he’s lived so long that a mortal life… it means so very little to him.

                “Surely you’re not afraid of a challenge, Little Fledgling?”

                “No,” she replies, voice far too prim for a woman straddling his erection.  “But I also want to start making a list.”

                “Ah, yes, you and your lists.”

                He leans back and pulls her down with him, and she giggles, a beautiful noise that he catches with a kiss.

                “You’re in an interesting mood,” she says, voice still filled with laughter.

                Klaus merely shrugs, though once again that voice is screaming at him.  But for a moment, he’d had her, in his city, agreeing to be his Consort.  And then she had fled… and somehow, all the light in the world had gone with her.  Now that she’s back, he has no intention of allowing her to leave again. 

                “Fly with me,” he says to her, determined to enjoy this, to enjoy _her_ , because this isn’t like Tatia.  This isn’t weakness.  This is enjoying her, coveting her, _owning_ her.

                When she leaps from his balcony, her wings spreading and lifting her into the air, he’s struck silent for a moment by the beauty of her.  Those sunset and ocean wings, her sunshine hair.  She hovers and looks back at him.

                “Are you coming?”

                He follows her with a vertical takeoff that sends him flying at her, and she lets out a surprised shriek before he catches her around the waist and sends them both into an upward spiral.  The winds sends her hair flying around them, and when he brings them to a halt in the air, he pushes it out of her face.  Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes sparkling.

                “Dance with me,” he says, and the demand nearly surprises him.  They’ve done this before, of course, but only rarely.  Caroline had too many walls to allow herself to trust anyone, even him, that often, and he was usually too focused on other matters to typically bother with something so trivial.

                But he wants to dance with her, right now, when she’s still caught up in their reunion, too focused on him to focus on the destruction below them.

                She wraps her wings around them and pulls him into a heated kiss, and he uses his own to propel them once more, forming a Glamour around them as he flies.  He won’t allow another to see the beauty of his Little Fledgling.

                It’s not the easiest, to do this when she’s in jeans, but he pushes them down far enough to allow access, and then his fingers delve into her heat, making her moan into their kiss and tug on his hair.  He makes them dip, and she spreads her wings out along with his.  She comes on his fingers as they hurtle to the ground.

                When they fling back up, he’s inside of her.

                There’s something addictive, about doing this with her.  Flying through the air with her, _in her_ , catching her moans on his tongue, feeling her in his hands.  He’d had her before, but there is something different now, as though the Reborn had caused a distance between them, and now that they’re gone it’s just them.

                Foolish, flighty thoughts, and Klaus is neither, so he pushes them away by getting lost in her.

                And still, that little voice screams.

\---

                The honeymoon phase was enjoyable, but it was overshadowed by the disaster zone that is New Orleans. 

                Klaus had sent his armies away in preparation of the Cadre, and now they have returned.  But the mortal population is decimated and lives in fear of any angels.

                So the honeymoon ends.

                And Caroline’s Type-A personality comes out to play.

                She had used it to run her organization of spies with a careful ruthlessness.  Now, she has to trust Bonnie to do the same – a difficult task she would have entrusted to no one but Bonnie – so instead she turns her attention to the rebuilding of New Orleans.

                And yes, that includes her lists.

                “You’re driving Stefan to distraction, Little Fledgling,” Klaus tells her in an evening, when he’s come from his other Generals, and she’s been (forcefully) removed from working with Stefan and several soldiers on rebuilding.

                “Genevieve plans on coming here,” Caroline replies, taking a glass of wine from him, and sitting with him on the settee.  Klaus looks at her with narrowed eyes, and Caroline smirks and drinks some wine.  “I still have my network.  She pursues an alliance with you.  Showing weakness to her is a poor idea.”

                “Genevieve could hardly defeat me, Little Fledgling.”

                “Maybe not.  But her armies could defeat yours, if she chooses not to face you head on.  Genevieve isn’t above sacrificing the entire world for her power.”

                Klaus is ready to argue, but then the Earth rumbles.  Caroline clutches his hand until the tremors stop.  They share a silent, surprised look, and then both move toward the balcony.  Caroline feels the power in the air once more, the power that speaks to her own, and she finds herself reaching for Klaus, seeking comfort in his touch.

                Her hand slides into his, and she can feel his gaze on her, but she can’t look away from the world that seems to be overcome by a fiery red light.  It’s not actual fire, but the light is uncanny and makes Caroline uneasy.

                That was the color of her father’s wings.

                The Earth rumbles again once more, and then, much as the blood rain, the world goes back to normal.

                “I’ve never seen this before,” Klaus says, his voice far too quiet.  “But I’ve heard of it.”

                “Awakening,” Caroline murmurs, not looking at him.  “You can’t show any weakness, Klaus.”

                He says nothing at first, and then she feels his lips brush over her forehead.  She leans into the touch of his lips, and clutches his hand.  She feels safe in that moment, even knowing what comes. 

                Safe and loved.

                And she knows that nothing good can come of Klaus and love.

\---

                Genevieve arrives with her usual fanfare.

                It makes Klaus roll his eyes, but Caroline smiles and kisses him, and he pushes her into the wall and considers ignoring the other Archangel in favor of his Consort. 

                But Caroline would never allow him to make such a faux pas.

                “You must go,” she says, with laughter in voice that makes him smile against her skin.  “And I have to meet with the Generals, let them know what needs to be done.”

                He sighs but allows her to leave, his eyes drawn to her sunset wings, and then further down, to the way her hips move as she saunters away.  His Little Fledgling is lovely in all ways, and this might be the closes to content that Klaus has been in… _ever_.

                And he must be careful with that.  Because content men will make mistakes, and Klaus cannot make mistakes, not if he wishes to achieve absolute power.

                So instead he meets Genevieve, sitting primly in his sitting room with two of her Generals close at hand.  When he enters, she gets gracefully to her feet and approaches him with her hands outstretched, a catlike smile on her attractive features.

                “Niklaus.  Thank-you for welcoming us.  I know that our last meeting was not… what I might have hoped it would be.”

                “You mean when you assisted Elijah in his attempts to kill me?”

                It might have been all nine of the others, but Klaus isn’t a fool.  Only Elijah could have united the Cadre like that against him, and only Elijah would have had the information needed to do so – courtesy of Caroline… which Klaus supposes means that _he_ now has the best information.

                “Surely that’s water under the bridge?  You know how these things work, Nik” – Klaus’ lip curls at the nickname. He’s always hated that, but allowed the younger Archangels to use it to foster good will, a good will he’s not sure he cares to have with Genevieve and the hungry way she watches him – “We all seek power amongst the Cadre, and what were we to do when you were making monsters?  I’m happy to see you’ve come to your senses.”

                The Reborn remain a sore spot with Klaus, and his smile at Genevieve is strained at the reminder of their failure.  He knows he could perfect them, could make them _work_ –

                But no.  He has promised Caroline that the Reborn are no more, and to her he will keep his word.

                His mind screams of Tatia and he ignores it to focus on the danger in front of him.

                “Why are you here, Genevieve?” he asks, boredom in his voice, because she’s gotten too cocky, believes that she can actually play him, when she is a mere child to him.

                No, there are other dangers that are more imminent, and Klaus thinks briefly of that day with Caroline on the balcony, and the realization that an Ancient was Awakening.  Caroline hadn’t seemed at all surprised, which means it can only be one.

                _Silas_.

                He went utterly mad in his last days, killed his Consort and fellow Archangel, and then went willingly into Sleep, and Klaus remembers the man’s power.  It had been fearsome to behold, and could serve a very real threat to Klaus’ own hold on power.

                And Genevieve’s presence distracts Klaus from pursuing any leads as to where Silas might be.

                “The times are changing, Niklaus.  The Cadre gains power, and now is the time to make moves,” Genevieve runs her hand across his chest, and Klaus catches her wrist and gives a squeeze of warning.  He knows what Genevieve’s sly little smile means – she speaks of her new ability to influence the mind of humans and weaker vampires, the one Caroline’s people told her of – but Klaus does not fear it.  “We need alliances, Nik.  Even you.”

                “And how would you see this alliance occurring?”

                “A union between Archangels.  It hasn’t happened since Silas and Elizabeth, and you know how powerful they were,” Genevieve’s smile is inviting, and Klaus sneers in return.  Genevieve wasn’t Cadre when Silas went to sleep, she doesn’t know the truth of what happened.

                How yes, the pair had been so powerful… until obsession and insanity claimed them both.  No one knew the details… except, perhaps, Caroline.  And she told no one the tale.

                “I have a consort,” Klaus replies coolly.  “It makes a union of which you speak difficult.”

                “Elijah’s Flower?” Genevieve replies with a laugh and a wave of her hand.  “Send her back to London and his tender care.  She can’t give you what I can, and her loyalty is questionable at best.”

                “Her loyalty isn’t in question. And I have no desire to invite a snake into my bed, Genevieve. I will talk alliances, but not unions.”

                “You would turn down my help for that… _Fledgling_?”

                Klaus simply stares at her in silence, not bothering to give her a response.  Genevieve looks back at him, and then her angry expression becomes a smirk that turns into laughter.

“Oh, but this is rich!” Genevieve’s voice is filled with amusement, her eyes glittering with suppressed mirth backlit by a vicious light.  “We thought you were so powerful, none of the Cadre could take you down… and now, here you are.  On your knees before your precious Little Fledgling.”

                Hearing his pet name for Caroline fall from Genevieve’s lips made him snarl, and then he grit his teeth.  Such anger, such protectiveness…

                “I am a polite man, Genevieve.  You have exactly three hours to be past the borders of my territory.”

                “That is a four hour flight, Nik,” Genevieve replies, eyes snapping, and Klaus gives her a pleasant smile that has her backing away from him, smug expression soured by fear.

                “You will make it in four,” he says succinctly.

                He doesn’t feel victory when Genevieve all but flees his presence, her guard hard on her heels.  He can inspire all the fear in the world into the red head, but that won’t stop her words from being truth.  No longer can he ignore the voice that screams, reminding him of Tatia.  He still can deny that there are no similarities between the situations, but that’s because what Caroline inspires in him is so much… _more_ than what Tatia inspired.  So much _worse_.

                Caroline has made him weak, and weakness is not something he will allow himself.

\---

                Caroline looks up when Klaus joins her.  She’s beginning to smile, because she had seen Genevieve and her entourage take off, and can feel nothing but relief at the thought of the redheaded Archangel being gone. 

                Her smile doesn’t last long, because Klaus is staring at her, his skin pale, his eyes glittering with something dark and hard.

                “Niklaus?” she murmurs, a questions she’s not sure she wants answered in her voice.  She’s gotten to her feet, her wings ruffling behind her.  Klaus reaches her in three quick strides, and frames her face in his hands.  She opens her mouth to say… _something_ , but he’s slanted his lips over hers, his tongue sweeping into her mouth hungrily.

                She’s helpless to do anything but clutch his hands and kiss him back.  She feels the wall against her wings, his leg coming between her own, and there’s a desperation to his kiss that she’s never tasted before.  All she can do is cling to him and ride out whatever darkness is chasing him.

                “I love you,” he murmurs when they finally break apart, both of them breathing hard.

                For a second, bright elation lights her heart, but it’s extinguished almost immediately.  Because Klaus isn’t looking at her like man in love.  He’s looking at her as though he’s seen his own end, and it’s written in her eyes.  She remembers Katherine story, of Klaus and Tatia, and how Klaus had killed the other woman when he thought love might be a thing he could possibly someday feel for her.  He had destroyed a woman’s life and family on even the possibility of feeling something for her.

                And now that same man is declaring his love for _her_.

                “It doesn’t have to make you weak,” she says, fear a palpable ball in the back of her throat.  “Elijah and Katherine-”

                “Elijah is a powerful Archangel, but he’s only realized a mere of his potential, and all reasons for that can be traced back to his heart being outside his body.  Katerina keeps him from greatness.  I won’t make that mistake, Little Fledgling” – he brushes her hair out of her face, his touch soft and completely at odds with what he’s saying, with the severity that now covers his features.  For the first time, hearing him call her _Little Fledgling_ fills her with nothing but dread – “I cannot let my heart remain outside my chest.  Not when it’s so very fragile.”

                “We both know I’m not fragile-”

                “You have all the potential in the world, Caroline.  Someday you could be the most powerful of us all… I always knew this, and should have killed you because of that ages ago.  But I allowed my feelings to get in the way, feelings I cannot allow myself to keep feeling.”

                As he speaks, his hand trails down the side of her face, until his fingers wrap around her neck.  They tighten, cutting off her hair, and forcing her onto her tiptoes.  She can feel his power swirling around them, filling her, cutting off her senses, and making her nerves feel as though they burn.  She wants to scream, but all she can manage is a hoarse rasp.

                “I am in love with you,” he says again, as though he can’t quite believe the words coming from his mouth.  Caroline opens and closes her own, no sounds coming out.  She wants to beg for mercy, to tell him he need not love her.  That she’ll live without it.  But there’s just burning across her nerve ends, and then burning inside of her.

                It’s like an incandescent flame, but it’s not burning like Klaus’s power.  It’s filling her instead, heat emanating in her, until she opens her mouth, and this time sound does escape.

                A high, echoing scream, accompanied by a release of that gathering fire, and when it sends Klaus stumbling back, she’s not sure who’s more surprised – Niklaus or herself.

                But this is a fight for her very life, and she takes the seconds of Klaus’ surprise to jump from his balcony, wind catching beneath her wings, and she rides the airstream, letting it lift her into the sky.  The fire still burns within her, but it’s slowly gathering back into the center of her, until it’s a ball in her chest, and she hovers above the clouds, a new sense of self filling her.

                She feels Klaus fly up behind her, but it’s not like before.  Before when she could sense his power, and it seemed to overwhelm her, now she has a new understanding of him.  Oh, he’s still far beyond her powers, but there’s a new sense of equality there. 

                “I spent decades,” she says without turning towards him, because he’s come up short, and for this moment, her life is no longer in danger.  Their reality has changed, and when she does turn to face him, she looks at him with new eyes, and a new distance.  So very powerful, her Niklaus, and also such a _coward_.  “ _Decades_ hidden away by beings that put even you to shame.  I swore, when I was finally released, that I wouldn’t involve myself in the wars of Ancients again, and you made me a liar.”

                “Do you think to kill me then, Caroline?  That perhaps you’ll use what you’ve created in me, to be the one to take me out?  You’ll need lands, after all.”

                “Thanks to you, those are available.  Kiernan’s are unclaimed.  Or they were.  You’ll let the others know, won’t you?  That the situation has changed?”

                They hover there, the chasm between them not just physical.  He knows now, that as long as she lives, he’ll never be entirely immortal; because to be truly immortal, your heart cannot exist.  And Caroline now knows that while he may love her, that does not matter.  Because he’s shown more than once that he will only kill the things he loves, and she refuses to be another Tatia.

                “I could kill you now,” he says, coming closer, and Caroline gives him a brittle smile, one that speaks of her broken heart – and it _is_ broken.

                But she is not.

                “You won’t.  Even you, Niklaus, need interactions with others.  And if you kill me now?  You may be an Ancient, or at the very least well on your way, but if you kill me now you’ll be a Pariah.  Nothing can be done against me now.  Not until I’ve settled and open declaration of war has been made.”

                She spreads gives a powerful flap of her wings and shoots upward, but Klaus hears her words as they echo on the wind behind her.

                “Tell the others of the Cadre, that I look forward to re-meeting them in my new position.”

                And the newest Archangel leaves behind Niklaus and all the pieces of her shattered heart.        

_End Part III_


	4. Hunger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is, the next chapter! After this, there's one more and an epilogue, and the story will be done. Warning: this chapter is pretty angsty, although it does end on a somewhat hopeful note. Thanks to everyone who has been reading, and don't forget to let me know what you think!

Bonnie doesn’t know what to expect.

                “Chin up, Bennett,” murmurs the angel at her side.  “You’re not the type to show fear, and we both know Caroline would never hurt you.”

                The words make her spine stiffen, not because she doesn’t like Enzo, but rather because it’s been centuries since she’s allowed just anyone to see her in a moment of weakness.  Enzo is not on the list of those allowed to see her as such, though they both have a bone deep loyalty to Caroline.

                “Why did you come?” Bonnie asks after a moment, as their steps echo on the marble floor of the mansion that had once belonged to the Archangel Kiernan.

                It now belongs to the Archangel Caroline, the blonde having claimed the deceased male’s lands upon her Ascension.

                “You know why, Bonnie,” Enzo replies, ruffling the feathers of his wings, the sound too loud in the silence of a building that seems more like a mausoleum than a home.

                It doesn’t suit the Caroline Bonnie knows. 

                That Caroline loves light and color, would never flourish in this empty, soulless mausoleum.

                “It’s depressing, isn’t it?”

                Bonnie freezes in her careful steps when the voice echoes in the foyer.  Her cease in motion makes Enzo knock into her, and his hand grips her upper arm, stabilizing her. But he doesn’t release that hold, even once it’s clear Bonnie will not fall, and for the first time the vampire realizes that Enzo is nervous as well.

                They knew Caroline the Spymistress… but Caroline the Archangel?  Power has a way of changing people, and Bonnie doesn’t know what she will do, if the woman that Made her is no longer a woman she can trust.

                But when Caroline steps into view, Bonnie can’t see a difference between the woman before her, and the woman she had said good-bye to in London.  Perhaps her power is more palpable, but Bonnie has always been sensitive to the power bubbling just below Caroline’s skin.  That it’s now there for the world to see does not seem that unusual.

                “I – “ It’s a rare day, that has Bonnie speechless, yet in that moment she is.

But Caroline clearly has no worries about where they now stand, because she sweep across the foyer and Bonnie finds herself pulled into a tight hug.  It’s natural, for her own arms to wrap around her friend in return, and that easily, Bonnie knows that while Caroline may have Ascended, she is still _Caroline_.  She breathes in her scent – citrus and something heavier that she’s always associated with Caroline – and feels as though the world is righting itself once more.

                “They say that Klaus tried to kill you,” Enzo says once Caroline and Bonnie have broken apart.  He welcomes Caroline hug with one of his own, burying his face in the blonde’s hair.  “Gotta admit, you look good for a dead angel walking, Gorgeous.”

                “When do you return to Elijah?” Caroline asks instead of acknowledging the question hidden in Enzo’s light words.

                “You know the answer to that, Gorgeous.  I’m your man now.”

                Bonnie sees the battle of conscious in Caroline’s eyes – that she’s grateful for Enzo’s presence, but grieves having stole him from the man that gave her a home.  In the end, cold practicality wins, and she give a nod.

                “We need to assemble everyone that’s loyal to me – not Elijah or Katerina, but _me_.  Bonnie knows those best.  I need a new intelligence network in place, before Niklaus has time to come to terms with… _recent events_.  If we want to survive, we need to know everything that’s happening.”

                “I’ll take care of it,” Bonnie promises, and perhaps it should surprise her, how easy it is to take on the mantle of Spymistress.  Only this has been her life for nearly as long as she can remember, and the skin fits her easily.  “But spies can’t defeat the Archangel of New Orleans.”

                The Earth seems to rumble beneath their feet and there’s a loud crack outside, followed by a steady thump.  All three of them rush toward the window in the next room, only for Caroline to hold out her arm, bringing them to a halt just as the front window crashes in, glass scattering across the floor.

                Outside, hail as big as both of Bonnie’s fists leave small craters in the ground.

                “Niklaus isn’t our biggest worry,” Caroline says, her expression grim as she looks at the devastation occurring outside.

                Bonnie feels a chill of foreboding run down her spine at the words.

\---

_Her earliest memory of her mother is when she’s five.  Her father had brought her to Otukan to visit, and she was so excited to see her mother for the first time in ages._

_It wasn’t until far later, as she sat, chained in a tower in Elizabeth’s gorgeous palace that she realized that, not once, had the smiles her mother directed at her reached her eyes._

_It was a painful realization for a child._

_Almost as painful as the realization that Elizabeth had never loved her._

_“Who is that man?”_

_“Wilhelm is my General, Caroline,” Elizabeth replied, and her eyes had been soft when she looked at the man.  Caroline liked the soft look, maybe because she hadn’t seen it before._

_It wasn’t until decades later, when Caroline lay in Klaus’ arms for the first time and enjoyed the feeling of his hands stroking her skin as they relaxed in peaceful silence, that she realized the look in Elizabeth’s eyes had been love.  As a child, she hadn’t recognized it, because Elizabeth had never looked at her with that expression._

\---

                “The Cadre wishes to meet, in order to welcome me to the fold.”

                They have met in a garden Caroline knows is free of observation, her and Enzo and Bonnie.  It’s not particularly pretty.  It has been overtaken by weeds and destruction, clearly it had belonged to Kiernan, and even in his death, the servants hadn’t dared intrude upon his sanctum. Caroline worries the edges of the letter that has arrived.  She recognizes the slanting handwriting as Elijah’s – to put her at ease? – but she can sense the presence of the other Archangels in the way it’s written.

                She wonders if she should be insulted by the ways in which they still underestimate her, even now that she’s Ascended to be their equal.  The thought is followed quickly by thoughts of Genevieve and even Rebekah, and how they would sneer at the thought of being labeled _equal_ to Niklaus’ Little Fledgling.

                Her throat pangs with phantom pains at the reminder of the other Archangel, and her hand drifts up to her throat, to touch the skin he had held as he attempted to kill her.

                _I am in love with you._

She wonders if Niklaus knows what love truly is, or if he’s been alive so long that such human emotions escape him.  She has seen the type of love of which he spoke – that borne of obsession – and she wants no part of it. 

                She thinks that if she tells herself that often enough, she may someday believe it.

                _I am in love with you._

So long she told herself, told the whole world that it was not love.  That what she felt was _not_ love.  Yet now, in the quiet of her own mind…

                But no.  Now, more than ever, she cannot acknowledge that weakness.  Not with the memory of his powers overwhelming her still imprinted fresh on her skin.

                “If the entire Cadre meets… the Archangel Niklaus will be there.  He had to grant you safe passing once, but he very likely won’t again.”

                Enzo voices breaks through Caroline’s ruminations, and she looks at both him – the General that will lead the army they are only now forming – and Bonnie, the Spymistress that is already pulling Caroline’s network back together, under the rule of a new Archangel.

                It still sends chills down her spine, to think of herself as such.  She had always known she had the potential; a child of two Archangels, power had always been Caroline’s legacy, even when she had spent so long utterly powerless.  But she had spent so long denying the legacy Silas and Elizabeth had left her, that now that she’s had it thrust upon her…

                It brings back memories she would rather not recall.

                “To not go would be to show weakness,” Caroline replies, forcing her mind from dark thoughts, and back to the present.  She cannot be distracted, if she hopes to survive the coming weeks.  “This soon, I cannot be seen as weak, Enzo” – her eyes slash to Bonnie – “I need to know _everything_ , Bonnie.  No matter how superficial a detail, I need to know it.”

                “Of course, Sire,” Bonnie replies, and Caroline nearly jolts, hearing the title she had so long used with Elijah fall from the lips of her oldest friend.  “I’m already getting reports… and they are… _alarming_.”

                Caroline looks at the papers offered to her.

                Reports of more Reborn… _and oh, Niklaus, you will destroy us all._

The seas dance in destruction near Kol’s territory, and the Archangel merely laughs, as though utterly mad.

                Genevieve has humans dancing to her whims, as though on invisible strings, and her behavior grows more erratic by the day.

                Bonnie is right, the reports _are_ disturbing.  It’s when she reaches reports from Finn’s land that the paper crinkles beneath her grip.

                Finn has been with Sage nearly as long as Elijah and Katherine, he has always treated her as his most prized possession, though she wasn’t powerful enough to claim the title Consort, and now she’s fled him in fear for her life in the face of his every more violent behavior.

                “What’s happening, Caroline?” Bonnie asks, and not even when she had nearly died at the hands of Kai and Caroline had revealed the truth of what she was, had she heard the vampire sound so terrified. 

                _Cascade_ … The word passes through Caroline’s mind, but the thought is terrifying.  She is new to the Cadre, all signs point towards and Ancient – _towards Silas_ – Awakening.  She isn’t ready for this.  For any of this. 

                “Caroline,” Enzo says, but there’s something wrong with his voice, and when she looks at him, he isn’t looking at her at all.

                Instead, his gaze is focused behind her, and when Caroline turns, it’s to see that a vine of ivy that had been limp and dead is now green.  She blinks and reaches out, and with the contact she can feel the life burst into the plant, watches as more life grows around them with wonder.

                But it causes a tug from within her, and she feels her legs go limp.  Bonnie is at her side in a second, supporting her, but after a brief meeting of the eyes, they both look back at the garden, life renewed within it entirely.

                “Gorgeous, have you been holding out on us?” Enzo asks, and Caroline might have been amused by the slip of the tongue, if she weren’t so shocked by what had just happened.

                “No,” she replies, tongue darting out to wet lips dry from exertion.  “No, this is new.”

                And again that word echoes in her mind… _Cascade_.

                And for all the beauty that surrounds them, she wishes it had granted her something that could stop Niklaus instead.

\---

_Elizabeth’s eyes were filled with something that frightened Caroline and made her cower in the corner behind one of her marble statues.  Usually she looked so happy when she looked at Wilhelm, but in that moment, there was no happiness.  There was just rage and betrayal._

_“You spurn me for_ him _?”_

_“No, my lady – it was a moment of weakness.  It will never happen-”_

_Elizabeth held up a hand, and Wilhelm silenced.  He kneeled and kept his head down, and Caroline could almost taste the fear in the air.   Then Elizabeth turned that angry gaze from her General to where she was hidden, and it was no longer Wilhelm’s fear that made her shake, but her own._

_“Caroline, come here.”_

_She could have no more ignored her mother’s orders than Wilhelm could, and so she scurried across the throne room until she stood at the General’s side, and just like him, she kept her gaze averted from her mother._

_When Elizabeth put her fingers under Caroline’s chin and lifted her gaze to her own, it was so Caroline could see her mother’s usual smile.  That cool one that never touched her eyes, not as the smiles she gave Wilhelm had._

_“You are my physical image in so many ways,” Elizabeth murmured, and her fingers became a vise on Caroline’s face, fingers digging into fragile child skin.  “But you are_ his _pride.”_

_There was only one_ his _she could mean, when she spoke in that tone.  Caroline’s father.  Elizabeth never looked at Silas as she did Wilhelm, either._

_She wouldn’t understand what happened next until far, far later.  At that time, all she knew was that her mother took her to the tower where she had taken Caroline a hundred times before, to teach her to fly.  But instead of pushing her from the window, she chained her to the floor._

_“Mommy, I-”_

_It took a moment, for Caroline to realize that the stinging pain had been caused by Elizabeth’s slap, and she stared at her mother with huge, wounded eyes._

_“He thinks to take what is mine?  Then I will_ destroy _what is his.”_

_At first, Caroline thought Elizabeth would return. That she would talk to Silas and Wilhelm, and whatever had happened would be fixed, and her father would come riding to her rescue.  When she saw Silas’ red sunrise wings, she was sure that was the moment._

_Instead, the earth shook, and Caroline sobbed in fear, but her father never came.  He flew away, and that was the last time Caroline saw him for a long, long time._

\---

                In the end, Enzo accompanies her.  He often went with Elijah to such things, and so Caroline knows that his presence will not be taken as a sign of weakness.  If anything, it might help her.

                A reminder that, while she might be young, it is to her that Elijah’s one-time General has sworn his loyalty.  While she knows it might cast a certain weakness on the other Archangel, she also knows that he is old and powerful enough to weather it.

                Caroline, on the other hand, needs all the help she can get.

                The Cadre meets in what is considered neutral territory, which already leaves Caroline feeling uneasy.  If they wanted neutral, they could have simply converged at Refuge.  Not only is it neutral, but as the home of the Fledglings, violence is frowned upon there.

                She wonders if they all believe Niklaus will kill her on sight, or if she needs to worry about violence from other quarters as well.  The dark thoughts weigh her down, making her feel as though she carries the weight of the world on her wings.

                “Chin up, Sire,” Enzo says to her as they finally come within sight of the neutral territory.  “Archangels can smell fear.”

                “Can we?” Caroline responds, despite her better judgment.  “I wasn’t aware I had such an ability.”

                “It’ll come with age.”

                She bites back a laugh, and pulls her wings in to bank, landing carefully on the stone edge.  There is a lone figure waiting for her there, and for a single moment, she thinks it’s Niklaus, and her heart immediately leaps into her throat, her entire body tensing in preparation for attack.

                But when the other angel unfolds himself, his movements are too loose.

                Kol is just as cocky as Niklaus, but it has a sharper edge thanks to his youth in comparison to the other Archangel.  Still, of all the Archangels, Kol has ever been the one Caroline had the most difficulty predicting, and he proves that once more by being the one awaiting her.

                “Caroline,” he greets jovially, and though Caroline’s racing heart has calmed, her body remains tense as she awaits his first move.  “Come now, Darling, don’t be so tense.  Your Ascension has left us all rather surprised. I’ll admit my curiosity got the better of me.  I had to be the first to see you in all your glory.  And Lorenzo… was Elijah left adrift without you?”

                “Olivia has been with him nearly as long as I.  She was able to step into my role easily.”

                “Ah, not going to admit that your previous master has any weaknesses?  Good man, I suppose” – even as he speaks to Enzo, his gaze is focused on Caroline – “walk with me, Caroline.”

                “The rest of the Cadre-”

                “Recovering from their own journeys.  Come now, Caroline.  You’re new to this rule, but you were Elijah’s Flower long enough to know how this game is played.  Are you really going to insult me this soon in the game?”

                Caroline will need alliances; she, Enzo, and Bonnie had spoken of that fact at length.  Elijah was, of course, the obvious choice.  But with ten Cadre members, one ally was hardly enough.  They had tossed around names and pros and cons until the sun was nearly ready to rise once more, and in all that time the only names that had come lower on the potentials list than Kol were Genevieve and Niklaus.

                But Caroline has never been slow to adapt – too often, her survival has depended on her survival to do so.  So gives Enzo a slight nod, letting him know she will be fine, and then she entwines her arm with Kol’s.

                “I would never insult you, A – Kol.”

                The slip up is quick, so quick that Caroline hopes Kol might miss it.  His lips quirk in a smirk, but she can’t be sure if it’s because of the mistake, or because that’s his usual expression.  Still, he says nothing about it, instead walks with her for several minutes in silence.

                “Nik tried to kill you,” he says at last.  Caroline doesn’t reply, because it’s not really a question, though the fact that Kol even says it tells her that Klaus hasn’t told the others the details of their confrontation.  If he has kept it to himself, then so will Caroline.  “He is the oldest.  If he wants you dead, you _will_ be.  None of us will step in to defend you… except, perhaps, Elijah.”

                “Do you hope to scare me away, Kol?” Caroline asks after a moment, meeting his gaze with one of her own.  She will not bow down to Kol’s intimidation tactics.  She has been playing these Archangels for centuries with her Intelligence network; they may have forgotten that, but she hasn’t.  “Send me running back to Australia to await Niklaus and my death?”

                “He is here.  He is in an oddly good mood, and I doubt it’s because he gets to spend time in Genevieve’s company.”

                _I am in love with you._

He certainly hadn’t been happy when he tried to kill her.  That he is now is… _troubling_.  It could mean any number of things.  That he’s realized that _love_ isn’t what he feels for her.  That he gets a second chance of finishing what he began in the sky above the wreck of New Orleans.

                That he has solved his issues with the Reborn.

                Just thinking of them, of their dark rot, makes her want to rub the skin over her heart, and it takes all her considerable will to resist doing so.  He had promised her he would cease his attempts to make them… that he has begun again tells her more than words ever could what he intends for her.

                Kol is right; Niklaus has put an expiration date on her.  But Caroline had rolled over once and played dead for an Archangel that had turned mad over obsession and love.  She is no longer a child. Now she is an Archangel herself.

                If Klaus wants her dead, he will look her in the eyes as she defies him and strike her down as she reminds him of everything they could have head.  Her pride will allow no less.

                “If all you wish to do is remind me of Klaus, then I believe I might seek out alliances elsewhere.”  It’s not the most political savvy move, speaking to Kol so coldly, removing her arm from his grip.  But he keeps on pressing this, and it just makes her remember Klaus’ hand around her throat, the way his power burned along her nerve endings.  It makes her think of kisses and heated skin and the way they danced together in the sky, and _I am in love with you_ spoken so coldly, as though none of that had mattered at all.  She doesn’t care about politics right now, though she may regret that later.  “I am no longer Niklaus’ Little Fledgling, to be looked down upon.  I am an Archangel, just as you are.  Perhaps you should afford me the respect that deserves.”

                She spins from him, having worked up a nice little snit, and Bonnie had once told her that she was the master of dramatic exits, when she wasn’t so busy being the perfect lady.

                “The humans in my land had an inordinate number of locusts.  It was quite devastating.”

                The cool statement makes Caroline pause, and slowly she turns back to Kol.  His expression is no longer smirking.  Instead it’s cool, but somehow Caroline knows that’s better.  That this looks means he’s reconsidering her as a threat.

                To do anything in her new role, she needs him to consider her a valid threat.

                “Why are you telling me this?” she asks him after a beat of silence.

                “Because we both feel the power, don’t we, Little Flower?  And now you’ve shown your fangs, and they might just be sharp enough to see you survive Nik.  If they do, we’ll chat again.”

                Her memories of the darkest point in her life are usually limited to her parents, and to Wilhelm, on the odd occasion.  But there are old, vague memories of a different face, of the one in front of her.

                “You were my father’s General,” she comments, and Kol says nothing, leaving Caroline to consider him closely.  It’s a risk… but allies are important.  “We had a hail storm in Australia before we left.  It was rather… _violent_.”

                Kol gives a sharp nod.

                “As I said, if you survive this, we’ll talk.”

\---

_At first, she would scratch onto the floor every morning, a single line to denote the day.  But as the days wore on, the only person Caroline ever saw was Wilhelm.  He was no longer the proud general, but instead a cowering creature.  Half of his face had been scalded to bone._

_Caroline later discovered that Elizabeth continued to wound him, every time that face began to heal. That she had declared she would make him undesirable to anyone – man or woman – so that Wilhelm would be entirely hers.  And then she gave him the duty of delivering food to Caroline, just enough to keep her alive._

_Yet still, Elizabeth loved him.  With the exception of his face, of that single duty, she treated him as beloved pet._

_And Caroline watched hatred fester within the man, day after day, as he delivered her food.  Until the days melted into each other, and there was no longer any room on the floor, for her to make her marks.  So she stopped, because what was the point, when no one was coming?  It had been years, since her father had flown over Otukan, and he had been Caroline’s only hope for salvation._

_She was twelve, had been in the tower for five years, barely more than an infant by angel standards, when she first wondered what it would be like to die._

\---

                Klaus had been awaiting this day for the weeks since Caroline left him in the skies above New Orleans, the waves of her newly awoken power a wave around her. 

                Her grace period has ended, leaving her fair game.  He knows that Genevieve already plots, but she will not be allowed to touch Caroline.  None of the other Archangels will.

                Caroline is _his_.  His Consort, his Little Fledgling, his love.  His to kill.  Should anyone challenge that, then they will join her in death.

                “You don’t approve of what I do, do you, Stefan?” Klaus asks his General, who has stood at his back as a silent Sentinel through this all.  But Klaus has known the other angel for thousands of years, and so his disapproval is a palpable thing in the rooms Klaus currently resides in.

                “It’s not my place to either approve or disapprove.  I’m here to watch your back against the other members of the Cadre.”

                “Careful, Stefan.  That made you sound like a politician.”

                Stefan says nothing, and so Klaus goes back to his contemplations of the outside world.  A burst of color in the sky catches his eye, and he watches Caroline come to land outside the Neutral ground on which the meeting is to occur.  Enzo is at her back, and while Klaus had heard that Elijah’s General had switched his loyalties, to see the truth of the rumor is a surprise.

                Elijah has remained silent on the subject.

                “She turns loyalties meant for others into loyalty for her,” Klaus says to Stefan, and his fingers dig into marble with enough strength to crack when he sees her take Kol’s arm.  He should not touch that which is Klaus’.  The younger Archangel should know better, and even from this distance he can see the way their heads angle to together as they speak.  Kol is unpredictable and dangerous, but he’s always had a fondness for beautiful things, and no one can deny Caroline is beautiful.  “Do you truly believe that anyone, much less an Archangel, with that sort of power should be allowed to live?”

                _That anyone with that sort of power over_ me _should be allowed to live_ , is the unspoken message in the question.  Because even now, Klaus’ fingers itch with the driving desire to bury themselves in Caroline’s hair.  The heart in his chest, which should be long useless, pangs at the thoughts of her, and regret is a clawing beast inside of him, when he remembers the look in her eye, when she flew away from him.

                Betrayal, stark and insidious, cutting through even Klaus’ driving desire to destroy the one person with the ability to destroy _him_. 

                Such regrets are dangerous.  He has survived for eons simply because he has never regretted any of the often distasteful choices he has made.  His Little Fledgling, for all that she now holds the title Archangel, cannot be a choice he regrets. 

                He turns from the view, because the longer he watches Kol and Caroline, the more he wants to kill the former and take the latter, remind to whom she belongs.  But she no longer belongs to him in that way, not when he has marked her for death.  He has begun to perfect his Reborn, simply to show to her that promises once made are no longer valid.

                He moves past Stefan and pauses at a table with a vase in the center.  It holds an orchid, delicate and purple, and that delicacy makes him thing of the blonde that has him walking far too close to the edge of sanity.  He needs his mind, if he’s to rise to the very top of the Cadre as he plans to.  Thinking of Caroline, he reaches out and strokes a petal of the orchid.

                Beneath his touch, the flower begins to shrivel, until, within seconds, all that is left is an unidentifiable mass of dead tissue in the pot. 

                The sight centers Klaus, reminds him of who he is, and what he is capable of, and how no one, not even his Little Fledgling, will stop him now.

                Soon enough, he will use that touch of death on her.  And he will hold her and confess his love one last time, because dead women will carry no tales, and she will die with the knowledge that her demise was necessary, for him to be the force of greatness he was meant for.

                Gods cannot be Mortal.  Not even a little bit.

\---

_The first day that Wilhelm did not deliver her food, it rained.  Caroline stared out the window, chains digging into wings that were limp on her back, weak from disuse, and realized that she missed the feel of the rain on her skin._

_No one fed her that day, but Elizabeth’s rage was a palpable thing, even to the daughter locked away._

_When the door finally opened, it wasn’t Wilhelm, but instead her mother.  Her power seemed to cut into Caroline like a blade, and she felt every wound on her body, formed by fighting against her bonds, open once more in the wake of that power.  Blood dripped down her skin, painting it red, and landed on the floor in heavy drops.  Caroline could feel tears fall as well, as the pain drove her to her knees._

_Elizabeth stepped into the tower room she had never once entered in the years since she had left Caroline there.  The expression on her face was neither the cold indifference Caroline had grown up experiencing, nor the vicious loathing Elizabeth had worn the day she locked her daughter away.  Instead, it was a contemplative look that made chills run up and down Caroline’s spin, instinct telling her that nothing good would come of her mother looking at her like that._

_“You have been locked away here nearly as long as you’ve been alive.  Your wings are useless.  Yet you struggle so.”_

_Elizabeth walked around her, and then reached out to touch Caroline’s wings.  She went tense at the contact, but was unable to pull away._

_“Such beauty,” Elizabeth murmured, her own, much more plain wings ruffling behind her.  “Your father’s wings are beautiful.”_

_Caroline’s screams seemed to last for hours, until Elizabeth had plucked every feather from the wings that her father had always described as his favorite sunrise._

\---

                There is a bite in the air when the Cadre begins their meeting.  The youngest of them all, Kiernan and Genevieve had asceneded when Caroline’s parents had lost their positions as Archangels, and at the time of those Ascensions they had both been at least twice the age Caroline is now.

                She is the youngest to Ascend that she knows of.  Even Silas had reached a full millennium before he had gained enough power. 

                So now she feels their gazes – each one weighing her, searching for any signs of weakness.  But Caroline has been playing the games of Archangels for longer than any of them know, and so she keeps her expression serene, to hide the storm that rages within.

                Niklaus sits there watching her, as though he hadn’t made his soul crushing confession – _I am in love with you_ \- before trying to kill her. She can handle Genevieve’s sly, smirking looks, and even Rebekah’s more obvious disdain.  She can even handle the quiet, suspicious gaze of Shelia, whom Caroline knows is suspicious of her and Kol and their brief encounter upon Caroline’s arrival.

                But Klaus…

                He had tried to kill her, an attempt that forced her into a power Caroline hadn’t been ready for, wasn’t sure she would _ever_ choose.  But he had taken away her choice – forcing her to either Ascend or die.  And for that she should hate him.  For that she _does_ hate him.

                But for all of that, hate and… and _love_ are not mutually exclusive, and she can feel her fingers itch, to push the errant curl that falls over his forehead back into place.  It’s a weakness that makes her fingers curl into fists, and Caroline thinks that, perhaps, she can understand why Niklaus chose to kill her rather than feel.

                Love makes you feel so very weak, and while she could deny the emotion in Australia, now that she is forced to meet his gaze, to remember everything, denial is a weak, pathetic memory.

                _His hand around her throat._

_A pillow of Damon’s feathers in a silent promise that no one would hurt her._

_An_ I love you _that promised death._

_The first time they danced through the sky together, and how feeling him inside of her had been even more exhilarating than the flight._

_The rot of his Reborn, a rot that was cutting to the very core of Niklaus, and Caroline’s heart shattering, because she could not save him._

Her hand has drifted up to rest over her chest, fingers digging lightly into her skin, as though she could rip the organ out and stop the pain it continues to pump through her body.  And across the table, Niklaus’ hand has risen as well, in an echo of her own.  Their gazes clash, and in that moment no one else exists.  It doesn’t matter that they are surrounded by eight other angels that would likely kill them in a heartbeat, because whatever he has done to her, whatever they will do to each other, there is still that inexorable tether that was formed over seven hundred years of knowing the deepest parts of each other.

                They had been fooling themselves, Caroline realizes.  They had been fooling themselves to believe that what they had was anything other than love, and now they were two Archangels, both left a little bit mortal, and maybe if things had been different – if _they_ had been different – it would have been alright.  They would have overcome it.

                But Caroline has spent her eight hundred years of life clawing and fighting for survival.  So long that she no longer knows how to be anything other than a survivor, and rolling over to play dead for him isn’t within her capabilities.

                And Niklaus… Niklaus has lived for so long that he believes the whispers that say he is a God, and Gods are not allowed to have their heart outside their bodies. Gods are not allowed to be anything other than Immortal.

                “I won my position through blood and fire,” Caroline says, gaze never leaving Niklaus’.  The other Archangels fall silent as she speaks, but even if they hadn’t, it wouldn’t have mattered.  These words are for _him_ , and they are just the bystanders.  “I had no plans to Ascend, though we all know I had the power within me.  But now that I have, I claim my spot on the Cadre, as your _equal_.”

                “You would claim to be equal with us?” Genevieve sneers out, and Caroline finally allows her gaze to break from Niklaus’ to look at the red head.  Beautiful, vicious Genevieve, who can compel the humans to dance to her tune.

                But Caroline is no human.  She is the daughter of Ancients, who has survived them and Niklaus, and far more than Genevieve could ever comprehend.  So she meets the redhead’s gaze and carefully reigns in her power, because she doesn’t need a show of it, not for this woman.  Not for Genevieve, who has never inspired the loyalty of a young angel not even half her age.

                “Equal with _you_?” Caroline asks, and her smile is brittle as she stares Genevieve down.  “No, Genevieve.  We _both_ know there is no equality between us” – her eyes move once more to Klaus, who watches her byplay with Genevieve with a cocked head, and though others might find his expression unreadable, she knows she holds his interest.  She has always been so careful around him, played the political games so very well.  But he’s never seen her in full survival mode, with the exception of that day above New Orleans.  This Caroline, she knows, is a new beast to him – “but we’re all Archangels here.  So I’m willing to play at equality.  Unless you wish to wrest power from my cold, dead fingers?”

                No one is fooled into believing she speaks to Genevieve, and though this is supposed to be a meeting of the entire Cadre, it’s becoming ever clearer that it’s truly a battle of wills between two angels that once would have called the other Consort.  Niklaus watches her with that blue gaze of his, and then slowly gets to his feet.

                “Walk with me,” he says.

                Caroline watches him as he walks around the table, motions for her to precede him from the room.  She shoots one quick look back, and Elijah who almost looks ready to intercede on her behalf, and at Kol, who inclines his head when their gazes meet, and silently mouths _after_.

                If there is an after.

_\---_

_Her wings had always been bright – an array of sunny yellow, brilliant orange, and beautiful red, even with some white throughout.  But after Elizabeth had plucked her like the humans did a bird, the feathers never came back quite the same.  Caroline thought they would at first, when the uppermost feathers came back, and all Caroline wanted to do was tear them out again, because if she’d had Elizabeth’s plain wings, she would have never been stripped of her feathers to begin with._

_But, as if a part of Caroline had been incurably tainted by the experience, the lower feathers came back dark.  At first, it was just blue, but then they grew darker and darker, until the lowest, longest feathers were midnight._

_The first time Elizabeth returned again, her beautiful face turned ugly when she saw what the wings she had torn to shreds had become._

_“Even more beautiful than before,” she sneered, and once more her touch made Caroline want to recoil, but she couldn’t, chained to the floor as she was.  “So much your father’s daughter, aren’t you?  Yet… you remain here alone.”_

_It was meant to hurt, and it struck true.  Because for all that her father had once made Caroline feel so very loved, she hadn’t seen him since he had fought with Elizabeth and flown away, leaving his daughter behind to be broken._

_As though to prove those words true, Elizabeth didn’t pluck her wings again.  Instead, Caroline felt her mother’s insidious power dig into her mind._

_That time, she tore her own feathers out._

\---

                The space between them is mere inches, their combined wing span not allowing for anymore in the hall down which they move.  But it might as well be miles.  Caroline feels as though she’s a lamb being led to the slaughter, but if Klaus thinks she’s a lamb who will be helpless…

                Her new power of life might be useless in a battle, but there are others that come with the rise to Archangel, and Caroline can feel the angelfire burning within her, waiting for her to call it forth.  She knows it will be a futile attempt; Klaus can call upon the fire as easily as her, and far darker powers.  But if she is to die today, she will ensure that her life has left a scar for the world to see.  She will ensure that her life will not be so easily forgotten by the man that would toss it aside so easily.

                “What did you speak to Kol of?” he asks when they reach what Klaus has determined will be the site of her execution.  The garden is quite lovely; a fitting place to die, Caroline imagines.  She steps out into the sun, enjoys the feel of it on his skin, and she can sense Klaus bristle when she gives him her back.  “Do you value your life so little?”

                “Kol and I spoke of Ancients and their sleeping patterns,” Caroline replies, turning to face Klaus.  He jolts at her words, and his jaw clenches, making Caroline narrow her eyes thoughtfully.  “He fully expects me to die before we can discuss any matters further.”

                “And you?” Niklaus asks, and Caroline watches as he pulls himself back together, but for that brief moment, he _had_ let down his guards.  And Caroline hadn’t mistaken what she had seen.  It had been fear.  “Do you expect to die?”

                “I fully expect that your purpose in bringing me out here is to kill me,” Caroline acknowledges.  “I find that I regret it.  Being another woman you love.  Tell me, Niklaus, will I be forgotten as easily as Tatia was?”

                He physically jolts at her words, and Caroline feels her lips curve in a bittersweet smile.  She’s not sure whether she feels relief, that at least he still remembers the name of the woman before her, or jealousy, because even now, she foolishly, heedlessly _cares_.

                “You… you were more than Tatia could ever be,” he tells her, and there’s enough hesitance in his words that Caroline believes him.  This is his attempt to soothe the wound that his betrayal has already caused.  His way of giving her peace in death.

                She wants none of it. If he wants absolution, he’ll have to search elsewhere.

                “You will regret this,” she says to him at last.  “Perhaps not now, or even in a century.  But someday, when you look over your empire, and all you see is dust?  You will think of me, and you will miss me, Niklaus.”

                “Is that to be my curse?” he asks her, and when he stalks slowly towards her, she doesn’t back down.  She is no longer his Little Fledgling, and she refuses to show fear to him as she would have once.  “To regret you?”

                He reaches her, and reaches out, his fingers running down the bare skin of her neck.  The contact makes her shiver, and his hand moves up to cup her cheek.  Caroline closes her eyes and turns her face into his hold.  She feels his breath, warm on her skin, mingling with her own as he pauses mere inches from her lips.

                And then her eyes flash open, and she lashes out with angelfire.  He moves away quickly, but the scent of burnt feather fills the air, and he curses violently, even as he glares at her, his muscles tense.

                “Did you think I would make it easy?” she asks, and lashes out again.  But this time he is ready for her.

                Their skirmish is embarrassingly fast, but Caroline knew it would be.  But that doesn’t stop her from feeling a bone deep, bitter victory at the sight of his face.  There is a chance that his healers will be able to save the eye, but she knows they won’t be able to mend the skin that has melted nearly to bone, not entirely.

                She may be about to die, but he’ll never forget her.  She will not be Tatia, easily brushed aside.  No, every time Niklaus looks in the mirror, he will see _her_ , the Little Fledgling that he destroyed in his single minded pursuit of domination.

                “If I had been a different man,” he says to her when he has her pinned against a pillar in the garden with his hard body.  “Perhaps we could have had it all, Little Fledgling.  But I am not a mere angel, I’m not a mere _archangel_ … and Gods cannot have a weakness.”

                He doesn’t tear out her heart, or remove her head as she had expected.  Instead he reaches out to touch her face, and she doesn’t know what power it is that he calls on, but it makes her stomach rebel, acidic bile rising in the back of her throat.  She can sense a rot once more, similar to the Reborn, but not quite the same, and when his skin contacts with hers, it’s so utterly _wrong_.

                Niklaus has never felt wrong to her.  His touch always made her yearn for more, but now all she wants is for him to release her.  The rot feels as though it’s transferring to her, and she knows this is the darkest part of his power, that it doesn’t just extend to Reborn.

                If he truly is a God, it is a God of Death.

                But if his power is death, then hers is _life_ , and she sees the light in his eyes change from a bitter sort of victory to confusion as her power rises to meet his, to undo whatever it is that he tries to do.  When he recoils from her, it is her turn to follow.  She reaches out, grasping his wrist in a grip stronger than she realized she was capable of.  Life fills her, and she pushes it into him, because if she can remove that rot, if she can get to the heart of him, perhaps she can save him.

                But as her powers negated his, his do the same, and she has to release him or risk growing as weak as she had in Australia, when she brought Kiernan’s garden back  to life.

                And so they are left, both panting with exertion, left looking at the other as if they are viewing a stranger.

                She will not forget that he has tried to kill her.  Twice.

                And he will not forget that she has stood in the way of his Godhood once more, showing herself to be an even deadlier weakness than he first realized.

                Silence fills the space between them, until Klaus finally spins away, re-entering the building and leaving Caroline behind, clutching to the pillar for strength and fighting back tears that want to fall. It takes all her will not to slide to the ground and weep, because the look on his face had cut her to the quick.

                It had been hatred.

_\---_

_“You’ve never asked me why.”_

_Caroline didn’t acknowledge Elizabeth’s question.  She is far too focused on carefully pulling out each feather in her wings.  They hadn’t changed again, after that first time.  Each time the feathers regrow, they are that same transition from sunset to darkest of black._

_She no longer cries as she tears the feathers from ruined wings.  She doesn’t know that she can feel pain anymore._

_“Are you listening to me?”_

_There was a sharp order in the tone, and it makes Caroline pause.  Her compulsion is to continue to remove the feathers, but then there’s that tear in her mind, as Elizabeth instead demands her attention._

_“Ask me_ why _?”_

_“Why are you doing this to me?” the words fell from unwilling lips, as though torn from the darkest, most secret parts of Caroline’s mind.  “I am your_ daughter _.  Children are meant to be precious.  Why do you do this to me?”_

_“Because I have only ever loved one person in the whole of my eternity” – Elizabeth leaned toward her daughter, eyes burning with an insane, vicious light – “and your father stole him from me.  So in return, I stole you.”_

_“Wilhelm,” Caroline murmured.  “Wilhelm went to father.”_

_“Silas seduced him from me!” at Elizabeth’s shriek, power tore into Caroline, sending her to her knees.  “He was_ mine _!  But no, Silas had to touch what he should not!  And now you will pay the price – for him taking Wilhelm, for offering sanctuary to a man that belongs with me.”_

_Caroline closed her eyes, and wondered if her father’s claimed love for her had been a lie, a secondary thing to what he had felt for Wilhelm.  Why else would he offer Elizabeth’s General sanctuary, while his daughter rotted away in torment?_

_“But don’t worry, my lovely girl.  Soon it will all be over.”_

_Elizabeth stroked Caroline’s destroyed wings, and Caroline just knelt there, numb to the world.  She had been numb for so very, very long.  Yet somehow, she found a twisted sort of comfort from Elizabeth’s touch._

_It made her wish she could still cry._

_\---_

She returns to her rooms, and as soon as she’s stepped inside, she finds herself pulled into a tight embrace.  She lets out a surprised gasp, before she realizes it’s just Enzo, and her arms come up to clench him.  After what just happened, she needs him, she realizes.  Enzo has always meant _safety_ to her, ever since he saved her from Damon. 

                “What were you thinking?” he asks, his voice fierce.  “To go with him alone like that?”

                “I had to,” she replies pulling back.  “I had to, or appear weak in front of the others.  As it is, I survived him” – and left a permanent scar – “the others will not easily forget that.”

                “Nor will _he_ ,” Enzo replies, brushing her hair back.  “Klaus will want your blood.”

                He would have anyway, so Caroline just shrugs.  She doesn’t want to speak of Niklaus, not with his rotting touch still burning her skin, and the wounds of a second attempt on her life still raw within her.  She had thought herself prepared, but she wasn’t.

                “You still care for him,” Enzo notes, cupping her chin and lifting her face so their gazes meet.  He gives his head a shake.  “That’s foolish, Gorgeous.”

                “I know,” Caroline replies, and her voice is rasping with emotion.  “Do you think I don’t know that?  But 700 years isn’t so easily forgotten, Enzo.  No matter how much I wish it might be.”

                Whatever Enzo might have said in reply is lost when a knock sounds.  Caroline knows who it is before the door even opens, having felt he power signature.

                When Kol enters, Enzo is standing at Caroline’s back, prepared to defend her, and she has schooled her expression into one of serenity.

                “You’re alive,” the other Archangel notes, and he looks vaguely impressed.  “Well, Gen will be hesitant to put you down as beneath her now.  I saw Nik on my way over… did you do that to his face, Darling?  It will leave a mark.”

                “I know,” Caroline replies grimly, before motioning at the chaise lounge someone furnished the room with.  “But you didn’t come here to speak about Niklaus.  You came to speak about my father.”

                “Not going to beat around the bush?  I can appreciate that.”

                Kol takes a seat and waits for Caroline to take her own.

                “You recalled that I was Silas’ General.  I was loyal to him for centuries, Caroline, and I remember the power he had.  It makes even Nik’s pale in comparison.  The only one that ever came close to matching him was Elizabeth and, well… we both know how that ended.”

                Caroline says nothing, just watches Kol with a polite expression.  Because no, he doesn’t know how that ended.  Only three know that, and two of them are unable to tell anyone.  As for Caroline…

                She simply _won’t_ tell anyone.

                “You were the last to see him alive,” Kol said after a moment, after it became clear that Caroline wasn’t going to make this conversation easy. 

                “Was I?” Caroline asks.  “I wouldn’t know.  My memories of my parents are rather… _vague_ , Kol.”

                “Are they?  Or do you just not care to speak of it?  What _did_ happen in Otukan?” Caroline stared at him in silence, and Kol got to his feet with a curse that made Caroline feel surprise, because she hadn’t realized how tense the other Archangel was.  She considers speaking up when Kol spins back toward her.  “Surely you realize we cannot allow Silas to rise again?  Not only is he an Ancient, but his madness makes Nik seem utterly sane!”

                Caroline remembers her last sight of her father, and memory makes her shudder and push those thoughts away.  In the end, his madness had been as violent as her mother’s, though Caroline had never been its target.  So she can understand why Kol would suggest what she thinks he is suggesting… but there are laws.  Laws Caroline plans to use to keep herself alive as often as possible.

                “You know the laws, Kol,” she says.  “An Ancient… they must be allowed to awaken.  The Sleep could very possibly grant them their sanity once more.”

                “And if it doesn’t?” Kol shoots back, and Caroline swallows, because that look in his eyes is too familiar.  Looks far too much like the one in her father’s eyes, and she hopes this is just a side effect of Cascade.  If Kol is truly going mad… “If Silas comes back, just as he was when he went to Sleep?  What then, Caroline?”

                Caroline closes her eyes and thinks of her father.  Elizabeth had had Genevieve’s power over the mind, though hers was far more powerful.  Genevieve can control humans, but Elizabeth could control any living creature, so long as they weren’t powerful enough to push her out.  Silas, on the other hand, had such powers of _destruction_.  If Elizabeth’s were a delicate dance, then Silas’ were a hurricane tearing a hole in the heart of her mother’s territory.

                “Perhaps it’s time to turn to prayer.  Pray that he comes back sane, Kol.  Otherwise we are all doomed.”

                “Not if we find him before he Awakens.  No one need ever know.”

                It’s tempting, oh so tempting.  The thought of Silas’ return, it strikes fear in her as nothing else, not even Niklaus’ first attempt on her life.  So yes, she can see Kol’s logic. She can understand wanting to put a stop to a reign of terror before it begins.

                Yet still…

                _There’s my sunshine girl!  Come and tell father about your flying lessons!_

So little time spent with him, yet Caroline loves her father.  Loves him with a fierceness that makes her decision, even more than the laws that would protect him.

                “No,” she says firmly.  “They are our oldest laws.”

                _He is my only father._

“Then I suppose prayer it is,” Kol replies bitterly.  “Should I address them to your Consort?  Only, Nik has set you aside, hasn’t he?” the words are meant to sting, and they hit their mark.  “You’ll forgive me if I don’t ask for talks of alliance, _Little Fledgling_.  But if I’m to pray to the man, I suppose I’d best not anger him.”

                Caroline doesn’t reply as Kol leaves, but she leans back into Enzo when he rests his hands on her shoulder as the door slams shut behind the other Archangel, the sound echoing in the room.

                And Caroline is left feeling utterly alone in a world that wishes to eat her alive.

\---

_Her wings had healed once more when the storm came._

_Howling winds and pounding rains and a power that filled the air that Caroline recognized, even after years without it._

_Silas had returned._

_It had been so long that Caroline couldn’t bring herself to hope it meant anything for her.  If her father had wished to save her, he would have come years ago.  Now she was a broken, battered creature that simply waited for Elizabeth to decide she was no longer of use._

_Or perhaps just waited for mercy._

_Caroline didn’t expect this visit to cause any difference in her day, so she simply knelt in her tower and stared vacantly out the window, watching as the storm blew violently outside._

_Then the screams began._

_At first Caroline didn’t recognize them.  But when she did, it caused alarms to sound within her body._

_Those screams were Elizabeth’s.  Her_ anger _._

_When her mother burst into her tower room, the hem of her gown was stained in blood.  Caroline stared at it with a twisted sort of interest.  Her mother was always put together.  Always the picture of grace and elegance, even in the midst of her madness.  But there was no elegance or grace in this creature._

_Her gown stained with blood, her hair in a twisted, wet mess around her face, and her eyes glowing with an unholy, twisted rage.  For the first time in years, Caroline felt a terror she thought she was no longer capable of._

_“Elizabeth,” said a deep voice, coming up the steps of the tower.  The voice held its own madness, her mother’s name said in a sing-song tone.  When her father filled the door, Caroline’s terror became even worse.  He was soaked in blood, yet he looked far more put together than Elizbeth, yet his eyes…_

_Oh God, his eyes._

_They landed on her, and there was no recognition in them for the longest time.  Once he finally realized upon whom he looked, the mad glint in his eyes became a burning fire, and he turned it all toward Elizabeth._

_“Tonight, you will die.”_

\---

                Elijah and Olivia fly with them as far as Elijah’s territory.  It’s soothing, to be in his presence once more, and when they part ways, Caroline can be assured of at least one alliance going forward.

                It’s not nearly enough, but it’s better than being left completely alone.  And Caroline knows that with Elijah in her corner, she has a far better chance of convincing Shelia to assist her in the future as well.  While she often looked down on the other Archangels, even the much older Klaus, Shelia has always respected Elijah’s respect of tradition and dislike of the dramatics that so many of the rest of the Cadre thrive on.

                “We’ll need to prepare ourselves, in case Klaus decides to attack,” Enzo tells her when they finally land in the courtyard of the manor they now call home.  She hasn’t had time yet to redecorate, but when she enters the front door, it’s to see that the place already looks different.

                “It was getting on my nerves,” Bonnie explains, not even needing Caroline to ask what was going on.  “This place is so…”

                “I know,” Caroline replies with a wry smile. “And thank-you.  Have all of the workers been vetted?”

                “Rigorously,” Bonnie assures her.  “Only an Archangel could have messed with one of these guys, and they were all busy with you on Neutral Ground.  And you’re tense.  Why is she tense, Enzo?  What happened?”

                Enzo explains to Bonnie what happened between Caroline and Klaus, or at least the few details he knows, and Caroline allows him to assume that it’s the Archangel of New Orleans who is most on her mind.  It’s not entirely a lie, because he does cross her mind.  But intertwined are thoughts of her father, and her mother, and the madness that had overcome both in the end. 

                It’s the same madness that creeps upon Niklaus, and Caroline hugs herself as she considers what she should do.  Even in her death, Elizabeth had never realized that she was lost to madness.  Silas had, though he had left Otukan in a dead ruin, his young daughter to fend for herself, before he lost himself to Sleep.

                Niklaus believes himself to be perfectly sane, and that makes him dangerous. A dangerous enemy is the last thing she needs.

                But she sees no way to avoid it.

                So instead, she will have to prepare.

                “How is the Network coming?” Caroline asks, spinning around to interrupt Enzo and Bonnie’s heated conversation.

                “It was pretty much in place already,” Bonnie replies, leaving Enzo’s side to join Caroline, handing her an iPad.  Caroline forces thoughts of madness and Ancients out of her mind, to look at the reports that her agents have sent Bonnie.  “The losses were minimal when I told them that they would be serving you instead of Elijah.  A few chose to remain with him, but they were the expected crowd.”

                People in place before Caroline had taken over as Spymistress, and when she sees the names, she understands.

                “We’ll still be able to use them to some extent.  My ties to Elijah remain strong.  But whatever information we give them will get to whomever Elijah has replaced me with.  Do we know who that is?”

                “Luke,” Bonnie replies quickly, telling Caroline that she had actively sought out the information.  Caroline gives a sharp nod at the name.  Olivia as his General, Luke as his Spymaster.  It’s a smart choice, to give the twins such high positions, so that their loyalty to each other won’t interfere with their loyalty to Elijah. 

                “Reach out to him.”

                Exiting out of the reports, Caroline instead pulls up a weather app, and begins to type in locations.

                “What are you doing… is that a _hurricane_?”

                Caroline watches the image of the storm on the screen and doesn’t say anything.  Kol had been digging for the location of Silas’ final resting place, Caroline knows this.  But she hadn’t known it… only had suspicions.

                But if she had suspicions, then Kol had them as well, and now Caroline has a choice to make.

                The storm is centered around what had once been Otukan.  No one had ever rebuilt it, mortals believing the land to be cursed by Elizabeth’s rage.  Ocean to one side, mountains to the other, and somewhere in those treacherous peaks, her father is beginning to awaken.

                Now Caroline has a choice.

                She can sit back and turn a blind eye, allow Kol to hunt Silas down and end him before he has a chance to awaken once more.

                Or she can find him first.

\---

_Caroline whimpered, kneeling as she was between two such incredible powers.  She was a child, not even a full two decades old, and she didn’t know how to deal with power plays between two Archangels that everyone had said were now Ancients._

_“You killed him!” Elizabeth shrieked, and Caroline looked at Silas, at the blood that covered him, and realized that neither of her parents were injured._

_So the blood that covered them… the tone in Elizabeth’s voice meant it could only belong to Wilhelm._

_“He was causing us such strife,_ Consort _.  He had outlived his purpose.”_

_“Then so has your welp!”_

_Caroline closed her eyes, because this was how it would happen.  In a moment of rage over her dead lover, the lover that had fled her for her consort, Caroline would finally be killed by her mother. She knew she should feel fear, yet all that existed was a bone deep_ relief _._

_But pain never came.  Instead, there was almost overwhelming heat around her, a blinding light that shone even through the eyelids of her closed eyes, and then just Elizabeth’s labored breathing._

_She opened her eyes, to see her father cradling her mother’s body.  She wasn’t sure what power Silas had unleashed, but it had left Elizabeth burned beyond the point of recognition._

_“Oh, my Love,” Silas murmured, running his fingers over the blacked skin of what once would have been Elizabeth’s cheek.  “Oh my Love, you should have known better.  You should have known that I would destroy you for hurting her. You could never win it.”_

_Then Caroline watched in horror as her father began to tear the blackened corpse of her mother to pieces.  Pieces and pieces until finally he rips out her heat and fills the husk that remains of Elizabeth with his power._

_Caroline cowers away as her mother is utterly destroyed._

\---

                _Otukan_.

                Klaus contemplates what it means, the presence of this storm.  Otukan had been the powerhouse of Elizabeth, with her maddened eyes and heart made weak by _sentiment_.  But it’s not Elizabeth that rises.   Though no body was ever recovered, they all knew that Elizabeth was dead, not simply Sleeping. 

                The others made the assumption, but Klaus knew it for fact.  Though he didn’t know what had happened in Elizabeth’s last, bloody days of life, Caroline had told him that her mother was no more.

                _“You sound very sure of that, Little Fledgling.”_

_Caroline looked over her shoulder, blonde hair tumbling down around her face, and it was almost enough to make Klaus toss aside his quest for knowledge, to bury his hands in her hair and focus instead on her._

_“It wasn’t something I could mistake,” Caroline replies coolly.  “Elizabeth is dead.  And Silas sleeps.”_

_“What did they do to you, my Little Fledgling?” and that hadn’t been a quest for knowledge, but simply because he wanted to burn away whatever had put that deep sadness in her eyes.  To destroy her enemies, and leave them bagging at her feet._

_Caroline turned fully toward him, letting the sheet fall from her body, revealing her beautiful breasts to his hungry gaze, and she crawled up the bed, until she straddled him, resting her hands on his chest.  Only for her, would Klaus play the part of docile submissive, and only because they both knew he could reverse their positions at any second._

_“I don’t wish to think of my parents, Niklaus.  I wish to_ forget _” – she looked down at him, his fierce Caroline with the hurt eyes and the will of a survivor, and in that moment Klaus would have granted her anything – “will you help me?”_

                He had been so foolish, he realizes, as he shakes of memories of her quiet moans, and the way her nails had dug into the skin of his back until they drew blood.  She had made him weak, even then, and he should have killed her.  But he had been full of pride, believing himself free of such weakness after Tatia, and instead he had left Caroline to worm her way into a place that shouldn’t exist.

                Into his _heart_.

                A heart that now hurt, as he thought of killing her, and he rubbed the skin above it, as though he could somehow rub away the mark she had left within him.

                He caught his reflection in the mirror, the scar of his face.  It had been mere days to heal from her fire, but a scar remained – rippling skin from his eye, over his temple, into his hair.  It wasn’t that noticeable, but that it existed at all…

                Not just a mark within him, but a mark without as well.  His Little Fledgling, able to fight back his powers of death.  And she had fought them back.  He had seen the rot beneath her skin, then watched as her light pushed back into him.  Had then tried to destroy _him_. But if she is immune to his abilities, then he is just as immune to hers.

                “Sire,” Stefan’s voice cut into his thoughts, and Klaus looks back at him.  The other man’s expression is sour.  He had wanted to return to New Orleans, but Klaus had his own plans.

                And now they rest in New Zealand, and prepare to finish the flight into Caroline’s lands.

                “Has one of her little birdies flown back to her yet?” Klaus asks his General, who scowls even darker but nods.

                “I made sure I was seen.  She’ll know we’re here within the hour.”

                “Excellent.  Then she’ll be prepared for us when we arrive.”

                Klaus flexes his wings, and looks to the horizon.  Not so very far away, Caroline and those powers of Life await him.  Caroline, and her knowledge of Silas.

                “Sire, shouldn’t we want to take her by surprise?  So she can’t land another strike?”

                “Of course not Stefan,” Klaus replies jovially.  “We fly not to kill Caroline, but to ally ourselves with her.”

                Stefan’s expression is dumbstruck, and Klaus can see his fear – _has my Archangel gone insane?_ – lurking in his gaze.  But Klaus is very much sane, knows exactly what he is doing.  Caroline will have to die, eventually, but right now Silas is awakening, and the key to destroying him lies within the beautiful mind of his Little Fledgling.

                _Keep your enemies closer_ originated with Klaus, and that’s what he plans to do now.

                To keep his enemy _very_ close.

\---

                Enzo and Stefan eye each other warily as they each stand at their respective Archangel’s back.  Bonnie clutches her iPad to her chest, but she is no less protective, her suspicious eyes focused on Niklaus.

                But his attention is all for Caroline, who looks at him coolly, already mastering the Archangel’s ability to look at the rest of the world as little more than an insect beneath their notice.

                But Klaus is no insect; he is an Archangel of even greater power than Caroline.

                “Have you come to attempt to kill me again, Klaus?” Caroline asks, and it gives her some satisfaction, to see his lips fall into a frown for a single second before he schools his face back into cold indifference.  Despite everything, he dislikes hearing her call him by a name used by all others – a name whispered so often in fear.

                He has always been Niklaus to her. But she can’t allow that to blind her, to make her _weak_ in the face of his presence.

                “It grows old,” she continues.  “Kill me or stop trying.”

                “It would go far more smoothly if you would stop trying to survive.”

                Her looks tells him exactly what she thinks of that foolishness, and she turns away from him to wander down one of the cobblestones of the garden.  She still thinks of it as Kiernan’s, but under her powers it has flourished, and as she strokes the soft petals of a rose, she can all but feel the life of the place beneath her fingertips.

                “I didn’t come here to kill you.”

                For a moment, hope flares hot and bright in Caroline’s chest.  Perhaps she’s a fool, but the thought that, perhaps, he has given up this thought that what he feels for her makes him weak –

                But no.  His expression is unreadable; not the face of a man ready to declare his love, not unless it comes with another murder attempt.  His eyes shoot to Stefan, and Caroline imagines she can actually sense the tension between the two men.  But after a moment, Klaus’ General turns on his heel and walks away, his spine stiff.  Caroline hesitates, her own gaze darting back to Enzo and Bonnie who have grown tense.

                “Frightened, Little Fledgling?” Klaus asks, his eyes holding a dare, and Caroline’s tongue darts out to wet her lips.

                “I’d be a fool not to be,” she says at last.  Honesty has ever been the single certainty in her relationship with Niklaus, and she finds herself loathe to give it up now, when everything else between them seems broken.  But for all that she _is_ terrified, she gives both her companions a sharp nod.  Enzo’s expression tightens, much as Stefan’s had, but he moves to follow the other man.  When Bonnie hesitates, he reaches back to grasp her arm, and tugs her behind him.

                “She isn’t very obedient,” Klaus observes, as they both watch the pair exit.  “You’ll have to keep an eye on her.  Disobedience can be seen as a weakness.”

                “I have no desire to surround myself in sycophants,” Caroline replies coolly, because not even Niklaus is allowed to insult Bonnie, who has been her constant and loyal companion for nearly her entire life.  “Don’t try to tell me that Stefan obeys your every whim.”

                “No, but he will obey in public.  And that is all that matters.”

                Caroline hums, but says nothing else.  She turns back to her roses, because if Klaus had wanted to kill her with an attack to the back, she would have already been dead.  After a few brief seconds, she feels his warm presence at her back, and then a tug in her wing.  She turns back, to see that he has pulled out a feather that had fallen out of place.  It’s a mix of orange and red, and he looks down at it contemplatively, running its length between his fingers.

                “What am I going to do with you, Little Fledgling?” he finally asks, bright blue gaze cutting up to clash with hers.  Caroline finds that she is frozen in place, because there is a tenderness to his gaze that has been lacking since that first attack when she Ascended.  For a moment, she can almost pretend that the clock has turned back, that there isn’t her Ascension and his new, unwanted humanity lying between them.

                That’s why she lets him kiss her.  It can be the only reason.  Because it feels so much like times gone by, when he cups her cheeks and, and her hands rest on his chest, feeling his warmth even through the material of his shirt.  He seals his mouth over hers, and Caroline closes her eyes and loses herself in the sensation. 

                It feels so much like home.

                But it never _will_ be home.

                It’s that thought that gives her the strength to break their kiss.  To push him back, even as his eyes fire with anger, and to once more turn her back to him in the guise of adjusting her roses, when really it’s just to regain her composure.

                _I am in love with you_ doesn’t matter when it comes followed by a death sentence.  And she must never forget that.   She must never forget what love has brought to her family.

                Heart break and death.

                “Why are you here, Niklaus?” she asks, and what a little fool she is, to so easily fall back into calling him _Niklaus_ , just because he gave her a kiss.  She is no child, yet at that moment she feels like that.

                “You know why I’m here, Caroline,” Klaus replies.  “Silas rises.”

                Caroline feels her breath catch, and closes her eyes at the sharp jab of pain his words make her feel.  What did she expect?  That he had come here to ask her forgiveness?

                And perhaps that _is_ what she had hoped.  Even knowing him as she does, knowing that he would never apologize for seeking more power, she had still _hoped_.  But no, he was here about _Silas_.

                “It’s always about father,” Caroline murmurs, her fingers stroking the rose petals, but she no longer sees them.  Instead she’s a child, and Otukan is burning to the ground while her wings hang uselessly on her back, and even then it was about _Silas_.  Silas and his lusts, Silas and revenge.

                Silas, always Silas.  The man she once loved more than anything… and even now that she’s a woman grown, thoughts of him still make her feel equal parts love and terror.

                “Do you know where he Sleeps?” Klaus asks her.

                “I have my suspicions.  You do as well.  But no.  I do not know for certain.  Even if I did, I would not tell you.”

                “He cannot be allowed to rise, Caroline.”

                Caroline frowns at his words, and slowly turns to consider him.  Kol’s fear makes sense.  He was there with Silas in the end, as madness took him.  Caroline might not have watched the deterioration, but she remembers well that day in Otukan, and her father’s madness was apparent.  For one that witnessed that…

                Well, Kol’s fear makes sense.

                Niklaus’, however, does not.  He was already an Archangel in charge of his own lands when Otukan fell and Silas went to Sleep.  He wouldn’t have known how far gone he truly was, not until after everything was already finished.  No one but those closest to the situation know to feel fear… yet Niklaus does.

                Because he fears that Silas will be more powerful than him.

                The realization makes Caroline want to kill _him_.  To know that he would use her, that he would use _them_ in such a fashion…

                “Ancients must be allowed to Awaken,” she says, her voice arctic.  “If you wish to kill my father, you’re looking for assistance in the wrong place.”

                “You fear him,” Klaus points out.  “Whenever you speak of him, you grow pale.  You can’t want him to awaken any more than I do.”

                “I love him,” she replies.  “He is my _father_.”

                “Then what happened in Otukan to put that terror in your eyes whenever you even _think_ of him?”

                Caroline freezes at Klaus’ words.  He hadn’t raised his voice when he spoke, but he might as well have.  The words seem to echo in the silence around them.  Caroline grips the stem of the rose with whitening fingers while her thoughts raced. 

                In 700 years, she had never once thought he had noticed such things about her.

                “You don’t have the right to know that,” she says after a long moment.  “You lost it, when you tried to kill me in New Orleans.”

                Once more Klaus is behind her, although this time he doesn’t touch her.  He doesn’t need to.  The heat of him all but sears her, and for a mad moment she thinks how easy it would be to simply step back into his warmth and lose herself to the past again.  But the past…

                Well, it’s better left in the past.

                “I want you to go.”

                She feels him tense behind her, and closes her eyes, but she will not take the words back.  She needs to be set free of him.

                _“If you love Wilhelm so much, then why can you not let him go?  Is that not what love is?”_

_“Oh, my Sweet Girl… an Ancient will forever destroy that which they love.  We have been alive too long to do otherwise.”_

The only time Elizabeth had ever called her that – _my Sweet Girl_ – and the one time Caroline had almost believed her mother loved her.  And for the first time, Caroline hadn’t wanted that love.

                And after all this time, she had somehow forgotten those long ago words of Elizabeth’s.  And she shouldn’t have.  Because Klaus is an Ancient, or very near, and Caroline doesn’t want to be a thing he loves and destroys.

                “Please, Niklaus.  If you’re not going to kill me, then _go_.”

                She half expects to feel a knife in her back.  This is a dare, one she isn’t sure Klaus won’t take.

                A beat of silence, and then the warm presence at her back is gone.  Caroline doesn’t move, not until Bonnie and Enzo rejoin her.

                “Klaus and Stefan have left,” Bonnie tells her.  Caroline says nothing at first, because Niklaus is gone, yet Caroline still lives.

                And she doesn’t want the hope that gives her, not with _an Ancient will forever destroy that which they love_ still echoing in her thoughts.  But for all that Niklaus hates what Caroline makes him feel, he has forgotten he is not the only one affected.

                He makes her a little bit mortal as well.  And that small ball of hope is proof of her weakness.

                “We fly,” she says at last, turning to the others.  “Bonnie, stay here and continue your work, but Enzo, I need you to accompany me.”

                “Where are you going?” Bonnie asks, nearly having to jog to keep up with Caroline’s rapid strides.

                “Otukan,” is Caroline’s grim reply.

                Niklaus and Kol will both be hunting for her father. Caroline will as well.  She cannot save Niklaus, doesn’t know if she even _should_ anymore.  But she _can_ find her father.  She can see for herself where he chose to Sleep.

                She wishes she knew what she will do when she finds him.

\---

_Silas turned his maddened eyes to Caroline, who just stared back, fear freezing her in place.  He got to his feet, and bits of his Consort clung to his clothes, but he didn’t seem to notices.  He bent to the chains around Caroline’s wings and with a touch, they disintegrated._

_“You’re safe,” he murmured to her, pulling her into an embrace.  Caroline wanted to recoil, because this_ wasn’t _her father.  This man was a stranger wearing his face.  A madman that hadn’t just killed her mother, but disassembled her.  “I have found you.  Too long she kept you hidden from me.  But you are safe. No one will hurt you like that again.  I’ll ensure it.  And then I’ll go to Sleep.”_

_It wasn’t until he had flown out the window, until Caroline managed to stumble to her feet and realize how utterly weak her wings were from years of disuse, that she realized she needed him to take her to safety.  That she needed a way away from this nightmare._

_She stumbled to the window, but all that awaited her was more horror._

_Otukan was in flames.  Caroline remembered mortal stories she had once heard as a very small child; stories of hell and demons, and if such a thing existed, then this was it._

_There were no survivors of Silas’ rage.  Just Caroline, alone in a city no one ever entered for fear of Elizabeth’s wrath._

_And Silas was nowhere to be seen._

\---

                “I’ve never been here before.”

                Caroline and Enzo land in the ruins of Otukan.  Over 700 years, and the city’s remains have been overrun with twining vines and weeds.  Yet Caroline can close her eyes, and breathe in, and somehow it still smells of the city she ran in as a child.

                “Elizabeth was not welcoming to others unless she had to be.  She protected Otukan as she did all that she viewed as hers; with a jealous greed that could destroy legions.”

                They stand shoulder to shoulder, and Caroline reminds herself that this city… _she_ is no longer a child, and this city holds no power over her.

                “The storm is breaking,” Enzo notes, and Caroline looks up.  They had hit powerful winds that had almost caused them to land, yet they had pushed on.  Now the storm abates.

                And in its place, power rises.

                _Silas_.

                “Stay here,” she says to Enzo, and tenses for a vertical takeoff.  Enzo reaches out and grasp her wrist, making her pause.

                “It’s dangerous, Sire,” he says.  “You shouldn’t go alone.”

                “I have to go alone,” she replies, gently removing his grip from her wrist.  Anyone else… Silas could very well kill them.  But not her.  She knows her father won’t kill her.  “Please, Enzo.  I need you here, in case I do not make it back.”

                She doesn’t await his reply, instead taking off.  There is another reason she leaves Enzo behind, as well.

                Silas is her father, and while he is almost awake, he is not there yet.  And she still doesn’t know what she will do if she finds him before he does Awaken.

                She flies over mountains, and the power grows ever thicker, until she is surrounded by power and horrible, horrible silence.  Anything else that lives is smarter than she.  They’ve already fled.        

                She swings low over the mountaintops when she hears the first crash.

                She doesn’t know why, but something about that noise sends her heart into her throat.  She beats her wings faster, pushing harder toward the power.

                _Niklaus_.

                She doesn’t know why she’s so certain, but somehow she _knows_ he is in trouble, that the crash has something to do with him.  She flings herself sideways to go through a ravine, and as she moves, the storm begins to pick up once more.  Rain bites into her skin, but still she pushes on.

                She finally sees it with a crack of lightning – two figures, too small for a mortal’s vision to pick up, fighting in the skies above the mountains, and her breath catches in her throat.

                “A difficult conundrum.”

                Kol has to yell to be heard over the storm, and Caroline’s gaze shoots to him.  He smirks at her, and there is something dark and mean in his eyes, before he shoots ahead of her.  Caroline grits her teeth and forces herself into another burst of speed to catch up.

                When she does, he’s already landed on a cliff side, seeking what little cover is available.

                “One of your boys is dead,” the other Archangel notes when Caroline lands.  “It will depend on whether Silas Awoke of his own will or because Nik interrupted him, of course, but my money is on your father.”

                “I would have expected you to be more worried.  I thought you believed my father needed to die,” Caroline replies coolly.  She hugs herself and watches the Archangel and the Ancient in battle above them.  Angelfire flashes, and other powers.

                But Niklaus doesn’t have his Reborn in the sky, and Caroline knows very well the destructive powers of her father.  She watches them, and clutches her skin, fingernails biting in.

                “Nik is our only hope.  You could say I _am_ worried.”

                Yet Kol remains here, hidden from sight of both of them.  And maybe that’s how he has maintained power – by never interrupting the status quo.  But Caroline spent 700 years being so very careful in Elijah’s court, terrified of memories that her parents had left as their legacy.

                And here is one of those parents, fighting the man she loves above her.

                “You’re a coward,” she says to Kol, and it’s not cutting or an insult, but merely a statement of fact that has Kol’s teeth gritting.  But Caroline isn’t there to see that.

                She’s thrown herself into the air once more.

                Her father is… _her father_.  He was once her champion.  She once believed him invincible.  And perhaps he is.

                But she won’t let him prove that on Niklaus, who makes her just a little bit Mortal.  She had thought that maybe he wasn’t worth saving, but in the moment when she could truly lose him?

                God help her, but she realizes that she will continue to fight for him.  Because he’s spent 700 years giving her his feathers, and kissing life back into her soul, and that _is_ worth fighting for.  The Niklaus she knows is somewhere, deep inside the creature he’s become – _that man_ is worth fighting for.

                Silas lashes at Niklaus with Angelfire, but Caroline is there, reflecting it with flames of her own.  Her father’s face twists into an ugly mask as he’s interrupted, until he sees her, and then the recognition hits.

                She does look so very much like her mother.

                “Caroline, _move_ ,” Klaus grits out, and Caroline does move.  She moves to his side, because that wasn’t just anger making his voice rough.  It was pain. Silas’ power has left bloody ruts in his skin, and when Caroline comes to his side, she’s not even sure he realizes how much of his weight he lets her take.

                “Daughter,” Silas says, his own voice hoarse with disuse.  But it’s still recognizable as the voice that used to sing her lullabies, and it speaks to the little girl buried so deeply inside of her, that Caroline hadn’t even realized she still existed.  “You are Cadre.”

                “I am,” Caroline replies.  Her hands stroke Niklaus’ chest, but her focus is on her father, who is looking at her with pride.

                “I always knew you would be.  You were always the very best of Elizabeth and I” – he looks as though he will fly closer, but then he pauses, his gaze moving to Klaus, and his expression becomes cold – “we will catch up, but first Niklaus and I must finish this.  Leave, daughter.  This is not your fight.”

                “But it is,” Caroline replies, her own voice as cold as Silas’ expression, and slowly, oh so slowly, her father’s head turns towards her.

                “Caroline,” Klaus hisses, but Caroline shakes her head angrily.

                “For all your declarations and… _stupid decisions_ , you forget that you are not the only person in this relationship, Niklaus.  700 years… do you believe you are any less beneath my skin than I am yours?”

                He stares at her, and Caroline swallows, because it’s the closest she’s ever come to saying the words out loud.  Niklaus might make horrible decisions. He might try to destroy what they have, but at least he was able to say the words.  He is an idiot, but she is a coward.

                “He will make you mortal,” Silas says, cocking his head and looking between them.  “That happened to your mother.”

                “Wilhelm,” Caroline says, her lips numb.  “I remember it well.”

                “Then you also remember what happened to him” – the rest of the world disappears, narrowed down just to Silas and Caroline, the only two witnesses of the great horrors he had committed to Otukan, to Elizabeth, and in that moment they are bound my shared memories – “and to her.”

                “I do,” Caroline agrees.  “But it will not happen to me.  Or to Niklaus.  It is two of the Cadre against you, father, and I know you well.  You are not at full strength.”

                For one moment, his gaze flashes, and Caroline thinks he’ll attack.  She wonders how much heart break one woman, even an Archangel, can take, and prepares herself for the man she once loved above all others to attack her, as the man she now loves once did.

                Instead, Silas flies back several feet.

                “I nearly destroyed you once in my madness,” he states, and his gaze is sad, so very sad, and incredibly sane.  “I am not sure I will ever forgive myself that.  You will not come to harm at my hands, Caroline.  I am not your mother.”

                “I know that, Father,” Caroline replies, and she longs to go to him, to hold him close and pretend to be that child again.  But to do so would leave Niklaus wide open, and she has chosen her side. “I never thought you were.”

                Silas inclines her head, and then his gaze darts to Niklaus.

                “He means nothing to me, however.  And I will not allow him to destroy you.”

                Caroline says nothing, simply watches her father fly away, and then she turns her gaze to where she left Kol.  The sun is beginning to break through the clouds, the storm of Silas’ anger abetting.  She is too far away to see his expression, but she can feel the force of Kol’s anger – anger directed at her, for allowing Silas to leave and gain more power.

                She shivers under the force of that anger, but turns and helps Niklaus to find his rest on another cliff face.

                “You stood against you father,” he says after he takes a seat.  Caroline sits next to him, close enough that their arms brush, and it is the first time they’ve had peace like this between them since New Orleans.  “Why?”

                “You know why.”

                They both sit and watch as the skies clear, and they are left to look at the valley as the sounds of nature once more come to life.  It’s as if there was never a battle between Ancients, and isn’t nature such an odd thing, that it can outlive them all?

                “We will very likely destroy each other, Caroline.  Archangels are not meant to be even a little mortal.”

                Caroline looks up to the sky, and closes her eyes, letting the sun beat down on her.

                “Did you ever consider you were wrong?  That being a little bit mortal might be what it takes to survive the eons ahead of us?”

                His silence tells her that he hadn’t, and she’s positive that he doesn’t agree with her.  But when she leans against him, he wraps an arm around her, letting his warmth soak into her.

                He may try to kill her again at any time, but in that brief moment, Caroline is at peace.

\---

_It took Caroline a full five years before she gained enough strength to fly even short distances.  By the time anyone came to look for her, she was all but feral._

_It was her father’s General that eventually calmed her enough to take her to Refuge._

_Caroline had no memories of her rescue.  But Kol never forgot._

_End Part IV_


	5. Empire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here it is, the last full chapter! Just the epilogue is left now. I hope you all enjoy it!

                It has been 800 years since Kol has last seen Silas.  The man had been his mentor, his Sire, and then his greatest fear. 

                It takes all of his considerable will, to resist taking a step back, when the Ancient lands before him.  His sunburst wings hold him in a hover for a moment before his feet touch down.  Silas watches him with contemplation, his gaze thoughtful.

                “You Ascended,” he finally says, turning from Kol to look out at the mountain ridges that surround them.  Caroline and Nik have disappeared, but Kol knows they can’t have flown too far.  Not with Nik injured as he was.

                “I did,” Kol finally says.  He looks at the back of his mentor and thinks of the knife in his belt.  If he thought for a second using the weapon would have the desired effect, he would shove it into Silas’ back.  But Kol isn’t that naïve.  He knows better than to think that he could kill the elder man.

                “You fear me,” Silas notes, still not looking at Kol.  “I can feel it.  It scents the air, turns the space around you sour.  If I wanted you dead, Kol, you would be” – Silas finally turns to face him, his red wings rustling as he tucks them in behind his back – “but that’s why you are here, is it not?  To kill me?”

                “I’m not foolish enough to believe I am capable of that,” Kol replies after a long, charged pause falls between them.  “What will you do to Nik?”

                “Niklaus…” Silas looks in the direction which Nik and Caroline had flown.  “Tell me, Kol.  What is it that lies between them?”

                Kol considers the question, and realizes he has no answer.  Once, Caroline had merely been Nik’s Little Fledgling, and they had all assumed she was a mere distraction for a centuries old Archangel bored with his life.  But then she had become Elijah’s Flower, yet never had Klaus’ interest wavered.  Not once in 700 years.

                “I’m the one that found her,” Kol says instead, and Silas’ gaze is sharp when it cuts to him.  “Sweet little Caroline.  The first time I saw her, she tore into me with ragged nails and teeth sharper than I would have expected.  What did you do to her Silas?”

                “That is of no importance to you, Kol.  My relationship with my daughter lies between Caroline and I.  And you have no right to question it.  Nor do I appreciate your attempts at distraction.”

                “Your lands have been taken by a new Archangel.  Named Genevieve.  But Otukan still lies free and bare.  No one has dared claim it… they say that your spirit still haunts its ruins” – Kol’s voice is cut off when he finds himself slammed into the side of the mountain, Silas’ hand at his throat, and Kol is reminded of the monster the man had become in the last years before he chose Sleep – “I don’t _know_.  I’m hardly Nik’s bosom buddy, and Caroline has ever held her secrets close.  He tried to kill her and instead she Ascended, and now we all await with baited breath what happens next.”

                The words come out as a rasp, oxygen cut off under the grip.  But when Kol finishes speaking, Silas releases his grip, and Kol falls to a knee, panting against the pain in his throat.

                “He will die,” Silas replies coldly, and Kol believes him.  He remembers well the powers Silas holds – the disasters he wrought in his madness, when he believed his daughter lost. “My daughter… she is so beautiful, is she not?”

                Kol says nothing, but Silas does not need a response, not to warm to this topic.

                “I can still remember her, as a child wearing braids, and how she would hug me around my knees.  She lost so much of her youth to Elizabeth… but that did not stop her.  She still found her place as an Archangel.  I will not allow anyone, especially not Niklaus, to ruin that.  He wears the same madness Elizabeth did.  He is not worthy.”

                _There are all kinds of madness_ , Kol thinks, and though Silas’ tone sounds perfectly level, there is a light in his eyes that speaks differently. 

                For all that Nik might be drunk mad on power; there is still something in him when he looks at Caroline… something that speaks of a sanity that could yet ground him.  But there was none of that in Silas 800 years ago when he leveled Otukan to the ground and then disappeared.  And Kol cannot believe that a few centuries of Sleep has changed that.

                “I must return to my own lands,” he says, looking toward the horizon, tremors of discomfort running along his spine.  His Generals are good and loyal, but Kol trusts no one as he trusts himself, particularly not in these times when the Earth shakes and his powers grow ever stronger.  Kol remembers making the sea dance to his whims and feeling as though he were drunk on power, and he thinks that if he were a lesser being, he might be ill.

                Silas had made the seas dance.  Just as he had made fire consume Otukan.

                Kol does not want to be like the Ancient.  He does not want to lose himself to power, and then lose himself to Sleep, never changing as the world around him becomes unrecognizable.

                “We will speak again,” Silas says, a clear dismissal, and had it been anyone else, Kol would have bristled at the action.  But the thought of being free of Silas’ presence is too tempting to give into pride.  “If no one has claimed these lands, then I will make them mine.”

                Kol says nothing, instead pushing himself into a vertical takeoff.

                Below him, Silas grows ever smaller.

                Kol’s feeling of dread of does not.

\---

                Klaus awakens and sun is shining in his eyes.  For a moment, he feels something akin to panic at the foreign surroundings.  But almost immediately, a wave of calm washes over his mind, and he recognizes the artwork as belonging to Kiernan.

                _Belonging to Caroline now_.

                He sits up in the bed, and feels a twinge of pain in his wings.  There is skin that is still raw, but downy feathers have begun to replace those which had been burned away.

                He had faced down Silas and very nearly lost his life in the effort.

                It was his own foolish sense of immortality and pride that had caused it.  800 years is not so very long to Klaus, and he shouldn’t have so easily forgotten how powerful the Ancient was.  But he had been consumed by fear and images of grandeur, and the only thing that had saved his life –

                “You’re awake.”

                Caroline enters the room in a flirty yellow dress that shows off her legs, and her eyes are solemn in her lovely face.  Her wings are carefully tucked into her back, sunset feathers just peeking over her shoulders. She comes to the bed and sits on the edge, and Klaus has to dig his fingers into the bedding, to keep from touching the silken skin left bare by the dress.

                “I should be healed,” he says, a darkness to the tone that has her spine stiffening, and action that tells him she knows very well that he should have healed – and that she also knows why he has not.

                “It’s too late for us now,” she replies with a shrug.  “Killing me… you won’t regain what you feel you’ve lost by taking my life.”

                “But I will not lose anymore.”

                The words fall between them, filling the chasm that had formed even before his first attempt on her life.  It had formed with the revelation of his Reborn, and for all the kisses and touches since then, it remains, unspoken but very much between them.

                “You’re burned out,” Caroline says at last, her voice remote, and Klaus swallows, because in that moment he’s not looking at Caroline’s expressive eyes.  No, he’s looking at the cold visage of Elizabeth, never showing emotion, even as she ordered the murder of women and children to make a point to the mortals that would disobey her. 

                It’s odd, that in 700 years, Klaus has never thought of Caroline as Elizabeth’s daughter.  But at that moment, he wishes he had one of the curve blades he has ever favored. 

                “I have offered you my hospitality as you heal,” she says, getting to her feet, carefully straightening her skirt.  “I will not revoke that… but I will not extend it either.  Take Stefan and _go_.”

                _You know why_ , her words echo in his mind as she turns her back to him, and he finds himself irrationally angered by that act, though he knows he has given her no reason to stay.

                _Did you ever consider you were wrong?  That being a little bit mortal might be what it takes to survive the eons ahead of us._

                No, he hadn’t.  Not in one of his many long millennia of life, had he considered that to be strong meant allowing in some weakness.  Even now, the majority of him rebels at the thought, because _he is not weak_.

                But that small part of him… that tiny part, the one responsible for giving her feathers to wear in her hair, the part that is desperate to know the very darkest parts of her…

                It is that part that has him on his feet and grabbing her wrist.  She recoils, as though burned, but he does not release his hold.

                “I-”

                “Do _not_ turn your back on me,” he growls, cutting off whatever argument she would have made.  He pulls her in closer, so he can loom above her, but Caroline’s gaze is defiant rather than fearful, and Klaus wonders when he lost control over this thing between them. 

                “I should have turned my back on you _ages_ ago!” she hisses in return, the anger that she had hidden beneath her cold exterior finally showing itself, and she presses her hands into his chest and shoves.

                But Klaus doesn’t stumble back, he just holds her tighter, and her eyes snap with fire, and he finds that his own anger is becoming something far different.  He _wants_ that fire.

                He wants _her_.

                He presses his lips against hers, his fingers burrowing in her hair to angle her head for his open mouthed kiss.  For a moment, she is unresponsive, anger making her spine stiff.  But he nips her bottom lip, probably harder than he should, and her lips soften beneath his. Her fingers dig into his hair and tighten to the point of pain, and Klaus growls into the kiss, hungry for her anger, for more of her.  He releases his hold on her hair to cup her ass and lift her, her legs wrapping around his hips.

                He walks backward searching for the bed, but he’s not familiar with this room, and so when he finally does hit the mattress, it startles him enough to put him off balance.  Caroline pulls back from the kiss long enough to look at him with a narrow eyed smirk, and then she throws her weight so that he tumbles backwards, and she’s straddling him, her dress pushed up so that he can run his hands along pale, perfect skin all the way up to her thighs.

                She runs her nails down his naked chest, over hardened nipples, and he hisses at the sensation. 

                “Is this your plan?” she asks him, leaning down to circle a tongue around one of the nubs, and then blowing on it, making him growl.  “Wear me down with sex and then slide a knife in my back?” She kisses down his chest, her hand stroking his length.  “Pity it won’t work.”

                He groans at the first contact of her lips on his cock, her tongue swirling around the head.  He clenches the blankets, digs his heels into the mattress. But this is Caroline being calculative, and he can feel the difference in her touch.

                He grasps her arms and pulls her up, spinning them around so that she is pinned beneath him.

                “ _Stop it_ ,” he hisses.

                “What?” she asks, a taunt in her eyes.  “Do you not enjoy having your emotions used against you, Niklaus? Having our history thrown in your face, twisted into a sick mockery of what it should be?”

                He stares down at her, and then adjusts his grip.  He holds her arms with one hand, bringing the other down to stroke his fingers along her cheek.  Her jaw clenches, but her heads turns, so very slightly, into his touch.  So slightly, in fact, that he almost believes he imagined it at first.  But that ice in her eyes has thawed, just enough for him to see the pain that hides beneath it, and he bites back a curse and closes his eyes, leaning his forehead on hers.

                “Caring like this is dangerous, Love.  For both of us.”

                “Then you should have stopped it centuries ago” – her breath is warm, mingling with his – “but it’s too late now, damn you.”

                And she’s right, he thinks.  He breaches the tiny distance between them to take her lips in a soul claiming kiss, but when she opens them beneath his, he thinks that he might be the one being claimed.  He releases his grip on her arms so that he can use both hands, running them along her curves, pushing up the skirt of her dress.  Her hands clutch his hair, running strands between fingers, and she arches her body into his.

                He pulls back when he runs his hands over her breast and finds himself frustrated with the cloth still covering them.  Caroline doesn’t need to be told what he wants, and instead sits up and tugs the strings of the halter top, allowing the dress’ top to fall down, baring her breasts to his hungry gaze.  She cups his face with her hands and looks into his eyes, her brows furrowing.

                “What are we doing, Niklaus?” she asks, her wings ruffling, as though expressing her uncertainty.  Klaus ran a reverent hand over the arch of golden feathers, and she hums in pleasure, her eyes drifting shut at the sensation.  It had taken so long, for her to let down her guard enough to enjoy his touch on her wings. 

                “I don’t know,” he admits after a long moment, before he looms over her once more, curling his wings over them, creating an illusion of their own private little world.  “But for this moment, I don’t want to wonder anymore, Caroline.  I don’t want to _think_.”

                Dangerous words that he knows he should regret as soon as they fall, but she’s pulled him back down for another kiss, and he can’t bring himself to care.  Not when her mouth is hot on his, and her nipples are hard against the palm of his hand.  He pulls back to replace his hand with his mouth, tugging on her nipples softly with his teeth and making her whimper, her fingers clutching at his shoulders.  They dig into the feathers at the bottom of his wings, and he lets out a hiss at the sensation, burying his face in her neck and inhaling the scent of her.

                She reaches between them and strokes a hand along his length, making him stiffen and groan into her skin.  When she guides him to her, he doesn’t complain, instead he thrusts himself home, and catches her moan of pleasure with his lips.  She wraps her legs around his hips, arching hers into his thrusts. 

                He allows himself to be lost to sensation.

                Only with her has he ever allowed this to happen.  With any other lover, even Tatia, there had always been some part of his mind that had remained ever aware, ever watchful.

                Ever _distrusting_.

                Caroline’s breath is warm against neck as she pulls away from their kiss.  Her skin is slick with sweat, mixing with his own, and the air within the cage of his wings grows warm with their combined heat and panting breath.

                She reaches climax first, her finger nails digging into his back hard enough that they had to draw blood.  The feel of her clenching around him is enough to push him over that edge and follow her to orgasm with a growl into her neck.

                They don’t break apart immediately, and he knows his weight must be crushing her.  But the stroke of her hand down his back is slow and languid, and he can’t bring himself to break away from her yet.  Not when he knows the moment he does, the chasm that has formed between them will once more appear.

                It is of his own making, this slow destruction of everything they had become.  Yet he can’t seem to stop it.  Because any time he might think this could work, he is reminded of all the times history has shown otherwise, and Klaus refuses to be just another footnote in history.

                No, he means to be a _God_.

                She pushes his chest, and he lets her push him off of her.  She pulls away, turning her back to him once more, and the anger rises again, but this time he doesn’t allow it to rule him.  He watches as she gets to her feet and carefully pulls her dress back into place.

                “This cannot happen again,” she says, not turning back to face him.

                “Oh?  Do you think you will be able to stop it?”

                “Are you going to stop trying to kill me?”

                His silence seems to echo between them, and he sees her give a slow nod, and wishes he could see her face, read the expressions in her eyes that only he ever seemed to see.  But he can’t, and even as he tells himself this is for the best, that weakness is not what he courts, he feels as though he is losing some integral part of him.

                “This cannot happen again,” she repeats.

                When she leaves, he does not stop her.

\---

                When Bonnie finds her, she is in the garden she had once brought to miraculous life.  The roses thrive with life, but Caroline herself feels utterly bereft of it.

                “Stefan has arrived,” the vampire says after a long moment of watching her mistress.  Caroline doesn’t say anything, instead waits for Bonnie to come and join her on the stone bench.  “He will destroy you.”

                “Niklaus?” Caroline asks, stroking a finger down the petal of a rose.  “Or perhaps you mean my father.”

                “Klaus… your father… both of them.  Sire, they _will_ destroy you” – Caroline turns to look at Bonnie, whose fingers dig into stone, her knuckles paling beneath the force – “I don’t have a home without you, Caroline.”

                Caroline swallows, and for that second it’s no longer Archangel and Spymistress, but best friends with bonds of loved forged across centuries spent together.  Caroline reaches out and grasps Bonnie’s hand, and the vampire’s grip would have crushed a lesser being’s bones, and even Caroline feels a slight crack before the grip is loosened just slightly for comfort. 

                “It’s a long history that I have with both of them,” Caroline admits, her voice soft.  “But they will not destroy me.  I won’t allow them to.”

                _Not this time_ , she thinks, because Silas _had_ destroyed her once, when she was just a child, and left utterly bereft in a city ravaged by his powers, left to fend for herself until she wound up at Refuge, and she wishes she could remember the details of how she got there.  Because now that they are in the midst of Cascade, now that her father has arisen and Niklaus loses himself to pursuit of power, she feels as though those memories might be important. 

                “Kol has entered our territory,” Bonnie says after silence has reigned between them.  She will take Caroline at her words, assume that those words are a bond, and Caroline knows that now it’s up to her to hold to that bond.

                She has never broken a promise to Bonnie.  This will _not_ be the first.

                “I will meet him,” Caroline replies, after contemplating what the other Archangel could want.  It’s possible that Kol has come to speak to Klaus; if that’s the case, he’ll have to wait until he has recovered and left Caroline’s territory.  She knows she cannot stop the two from plotting together, most likely against her father, but she’ll be damned if she lets them do so under her roof. 

                So, she takes to the air.  She knows that Bonnie will send Enzo after her, but she has the head start.  Hopefully her General will arrive in time if she hits trouble, otherwise it’s better that he keep his distance.

                She meets Kol halfway between her manor and the border that marks the edge of her territory.  They both hover in the air, with steady wing pumps and each watches the other distrustful eyes.  Caroline will not forget that Kol plotted to kill her father before he awoke, and Kol will not forget that Caroline’s allegiances lie elsewhere.

                “If I said I needed to speak to Nik?” he asks after a long moment.

                “I would tell you to wait until he is well enough to leave my territory.”

                Kol gives a small nod, and then he folds his wings, plummeting towards the earth.  It startles Caroline at first, but she follows him, at a more sedate pace, down to the ground.  She doesn’t feel the need to be reckless, though she supposes it’s to be expected from Kol.  He has always been the most restless of the Cadre.

                “Your father is mad,” he says as Caroline folds her wings into her back.

                “Is there proof of this accusation?” Caroline asks, after a long pause that left the air thick with tension.  “Or is this based on his actions of the past?  We both know the stories; that an Ancient can return from madness if they spend enough time in sleep.”

                “And you think eight hundred years is enough time?” Kol replies, a hint of a sneer in his voice.  It’s clear he believes Caroline to be naïve if she does believe so, so she remains silent, having yet to form opinions on her father and where they stand.  “I knew him far longer than you, Caroline.”

                “You were his General.  Archangels treat their people differently than their family,” Caroline says levelly, and Kol gives a snort.

                “Please, we both know that’s a load of crap.  Are you telling me that the lovely Bonnie is a mere underling to you?”

                “Bonnie is different,” Caroline retorts, still keeping her voice level. “And I am not my father.”

                “No,” Kol agrees, his gaze contemplative.  “No, you’re not.  Your father would have never let a threat of his caliber live” – he turns his back to her, spreading his wings, preparing for a vertical takeoff. He pauses before doing so however, giving her one last look – “tell Niklaus I wish to speak to him.”

                “Wait,” Caroline blurts before Kol and take flight.  He freezes, though he doesn’t turn back to her, and simply waits.  Caroline mentally curses herself, because what is she to say now?  She knows what she _wants_ to say – _what happened to me?_ – but to do so would be to show Kol a weakness, and that would be foolish. 

                “Well?” Kol prompts when she is silent for too long.

                “He is an Ancient,” she says, instead of asking her question, though she hates that she will continue to have blanks that she thinks only Kol might be able to fill.  “To try and kill him is to court madness.”

                The look he gives her is filled with amusement that tells her he knows these are not the words she wanted to say.

                “When I found you, you tried to claw my face off.  Though it was clear the next time we met that you didn’t recall it” – he gives a low laugh at whatever he sees in her expression and inclines her head – “we all have dark places, don’t we, Caroline?  But you should remember that you court the darkest of us all.  Neither of them will bring you any good in the end.”

                “Yet you would ally with one of them,” Caroline retorts, her hands clenching into fists.

                “Perhaps.  But I would not welcome him into my bed.  And that is the difference between us.  Should you ever wish to know the rest of your own secrets, all you need do is ask.”

                Caroline is hardly naïve enough to believe the offer is done out of altruism.  Kol wants something, and if he’s showing his cards in this fashion, then that means she is the only one that give him whatever that want is.  But she remembers how quick he was to abandon her to Niklaus during the meeting of the Cadre.  This is hardly a man who will have her back, and as such she is not eager to have _his_. Perhaps he can read something of her emotions in her expression.  Or perhaps he is simply wise enough to know when to walk away.  But he doesn’t remain after making his offer, instead taking to the air with a powerful vertical thrust.

                Caroline looks over her shoulder as Enzo joins her, his dark eyes focused on the retreating Archangel.

                “That one will kill you if you give him the chance, Gorgeous,” her General murmurs.  Caroline contemplates him, until he looks down and raises a brow at her consideration.

                “I need to make a trip,” she says at last.

                “A trip?  Gorgeous, your hold on this territory is still tenuous, and you’ve spent much of it elsewhere already.  Leaving now leaves you ripe to attack.”

                “Not leaving now leaves Kol with all the power,” Caroline counters, because she remembers her mother’s death, and then there is nothing but a blank slate until waking to Elena’s gentle ministrations, and by then months had passed.  “Elena has answers I need.”

                “Refuge,” Enzo murmurs, ruffling his wings.  “You would leave while Niklaus is still in your Territory?”

                “No,” Caroline replies shortly.  “That’s why we need him to _leave_.”

                “What do you hope to find there, Caroline?” Enzo asked, a cool demand in his voice that has her spine stiffening.  “I was there, the day Kol brought you to Refuge.  You were too skinny, a mere ghost, and you refused to tell us what happened to your parents.  Did you not remember?”

                Caroline lets out a mirthless laugh, because she _wishes_ that was what she had forgotten.  She wishes she could forget the feeling of Elizabeth tearing out her feathers, of tearing them out herself, because a child couldn’t resist the considerable will of an Ancient.  She _wishes_ it were that simple.

                “Kol holds knowledge of my… lost time. He dangles it over my head, those lost months.”

                “Those lost months hold nothing of value,” Enzo informs her, placing his hands on her arms.  “He brought you, you were wild, but Elena and Lexie showed great patience, and eventually you came back to sanity.  Gorgeous, there is _nothing_ in your lost time for Kol to hold over your head, and he knows it.”

                “Then why do it?” she asks grimly.  “What has he to gain?”

                It’s all plots and wicked deeds with Kol, of course.  He wants her weak, so he can…

                “He fears Silas above all others,” Enzo says, echoing the thoughts that run through Caroline’s mind.

                “Divide and conquer,” Caroline agrees grimly.  “He wants me distracted.”

                “As long as Niklaus is here, you will be.”

                “I know,” Caroline hugs herself and clenches her jaw and tries to pretend that her entire being doesn’t ache, because this isn’t what was supposed to happen.  When she began this… _thing_ with Niklaus, she had thought… she had thought…

                She no longer knows what she had been thinking.  She _hadn’t_ been thinking, and that is exactly the problem.  For too long, she has allowed her foolish heart to guide her actions with him, even when she told herself that he touched no more than her physical body.

                “When we get back, you will escort him from my territory.  Him and his lapdog.”

                She tells herself that this is truly the end.  That with this banishment, she will draw her line in the sand, and it will firmly separate them.  She is done playing with him, can no longer afford to play the games they once amused themselves with.  And even as she tries to weave lies in her heart, another insidious voice whispers that it’s hopeless.  She can feel his hands and lips on her skin still, as though branded there by the passion that forever simmers between them, and though her fingers touch her lips, though she tries to ignore the memory.  She _needs_ to ignore the memory.  Niklaus will continue to try and destroy her, and no words of love that pass between them will change that.

                Kol is right – to seek an alliance is one thing, but to continue to let him in her _bed_?  She is not a foolish girl, but there is no other description for the path she walks.  And perhaps when she was just Elijah’s Spymistress she could excuse such foolish whims.  But she is an Archangel in her own right now, and it’s not just her own survival at stake anymore.

                It’s Enzo, and it’s Bonnie, and it’s all the people that have yet to give her their trust, but whose success relies on her making her place in the Cadre.

                “Caroline?” Enzo asks, his voice low, and Caroline gives him a wan smile.

                “I’ve been a foolish child,” she tells him softly, and it’s testament to their years of being compatriots that he doesn’t ask to what she refers.

                “You’ve been in love, Gorgeous.  It makes fools and sinners of us all.”

\---

                “You’re here to forcefully remove me” – Klaus is buttoning his shirt when Caroline enters.  She doesn’t reply, merely moves past him to the balcony, and Klaus narrows his eyes at her back.  There is a difference in her, compared to when he last saw her, just short hours ago – “there is no need.  I have plans of my own to leave.  My territory needs me.”

                “Your territory?  Or your Reborn?”

                “Still bitterness over that, Caroline?  My Reborn are a weapon of the likes the world has never seen. Do you really think I would give them up merely because a mere Fledgling disapproves?”

                “Archangel,” she says, though her voice is so soft he thinks he misheard at first.  But then she speaks again, and this time her voice is clear and strong.  “I am not your _Little Fledgling_ any longer, Niklaus.  I am an Archangel – your _equal_ , and you shall treat me as such.  Your Reborn are a scourge, but luckily for you I have matters that take precedence over them. So far, your pets have not done damage to any other territory.  _Keep it_ that way.”

                “Is that a threat?” he steps to her back, and sees her knuckles tighten on the banister of the balcony.  She must feel him getting closer, as she flares her wings out as a barrier between them.  Klaus pauses to admire the sight, and he reaches out, stroking his hand over the arch and down to where the wings meet her back.  Goosebumps rise over her skin, and he repeats the motion.  “You are still so very young.”

                “And you understand nothing,” Caroline replies, a bitter undertone finding its way through the ice that has coated her voice.  She snaps her wings tight against her body, and Klaus has to pull his hand back or have it be caught by the motion.  She spins so she’s looking at him.  “I will ally with you if it becomes necessary.  I will sit across from you at meeting of the Cadre and work with you to ensure all runs smoothly.  But I won’t allow you to continue to destroy me.  I _can’t_.”

                Determination has turned her spine to steal, and when Klaus cups her cheek, searches her eye for the love that had burned there so brightly, he sees none of it.  She has retreated behind a wall, and Klaus drops his hand, forcing himself to do the same.

                He’s had far more practice at it than some eight hundred year old child, and if she thinks she will ever win in a battle of wills, then Caroline is a fool.  But he’ll allow her to be a fool.  It will make keeping his own distance so much easier.

                “Then when we see each other again… well, who knows what we’ll be?”

                “Who knows,” she agrees.

                And with a thousand words left unspoken between them, Klaus walks away. 

\---

                Part of her still wants to go to Refuge. 

                Kol’s words haunt her, make her wonder if there is something she is missing… but even were she to go, she doesn’t know that Elena or Lexie could tell her anything more than Enzo did.  And even were they able to… Enzo’s point remains.

                _What value would it give her now?_

And the answer is none.  She remembers her torture, and Elizabeth’s subsequent death.  She remembers Silas leveling Otukan.  There is nothing more to remember but days as a feral child simply surviving, and doesn’t she carry enough heartbreak with the memories she _does_ have, without adding more?

                Instead, she settles into her territory and begins to set up her base of powers.  She still has people among the other Archangels, and they report that the power surge that the others had experienced prior to Silas’ rising seems to have leveled off, and with that leveling off, the violence that had threatened to rise amongst the Cadre has lessened as well.  No longer are they ruled by emotion and power, and level heads seem to prevail.

                It’s a relief to Caroline, because the last thing she wished to deal with was Finn falling into madness. 

                Not when his lands border hers, and she relies on a peaceful if distant relationship with him.

                Her own powers have the gardens of her home thriving, and Bonnie reports that good health is widespread throughout the villagers.

                “They say that you’re the cause.”

                “I’m not sure you think that’s a good thing,” Caroline comments, because Bonnie’s expression is pensive and thoughtful.

                “It’s an excellent thing,” Bonnie replies with a shake of her head and a weak smile.  “They think that you’re an Angel of Life, and that you coming here is a blessing.  It makes taking over for Kiernan far easier than I ever expected… it’s just…” Bonnie sighs.  “It’s Niklaus, Silas, and Kol, Caroline.  Right now it’s skirmishes – like children fighting on a playground.  But Silas struck at Niklaus’ Reborn… most of them are destroyed.  I’ve heard nothing of war yet… but Jenna’s reports from Otukan aren’t of their usual quality.”

                Caroline says nothing at first.  She wants to bury her head in the sand and forget all of this.  But she no longer can.  She is Cadre, and that is more important than her heart, than her family…

                “I will speak to him.”

\---

                “Caroline.  The lovely young woman you sent to me said you wished to speak to me… although I’m not sure I enjoy this manner of doing so.”

                Silas speaks to her from her computer screen, a Skype call set up with Caroline, using Jenna, whom she had sent to help her father adjust to modern life… and to keep her updated on what occurred within the ruins of Otukan.  The red head is visible over his shoulder, and Caroline bites back a smile when Jenna rolls her eyes slightly at being called _lovely young woman_.

                She is as old as Enzo, hardly _young_.

                But the urge to smile is quickly replaced by concern.  Jenna looks pale and unwell and not at all herself.  If her father has mistreated the angel…

                Caroline does not wish to think on what that means.

                “Father,” Caroline replies levelly.  “I wished to see how you are adjusting.”

                “Those that were loyal to me before I went to Sleep have come to join me.  Kol is not happy of course” – Silas gives a grin that holds no mirth, but that says Kol’s displeasure amuses him greatly – “but then, Kol has apparently lost much of what loyalty is, since he became Cadre.”

                “He is an Archangel in his own right, now.  His loyalty is to his people.”

                Silas’ scoff says exactly what he thinks of that, and Caroline has to bite back her temper.  She reminds herself that her father is of a different time, that he hasn’t learned to adapt to this time as he must.

                “I’ve been hearing rumors, father,” Caroline says, just managing to refrain from sighing.  “None of them are… _good_.  I told you to leave Niklaus be.”

                “And I have since heard what he did to you.  Am I to simply allow that insult to my daughter to stand?” Silas’ eyes flash with anger.  “After what I did to my own _mate_ , do you really think I would allow some upstart to harm my daughter?”

                “Mother wasn’t your mate.  You were both obsessed with Wilhelm”- Silas’ eyes light with surprise and Caroline crosses her arms – “I was a child, that doesn’t mean I don’t remember.  I’m asking you to leave him be, father.”

                “And if I don’t?” he asks raising a brow.

                Caroline says nothing, just watches him silently.

                “I have a legacy to regain, Caroline.  And this challenge comes far too late.  War has already been declared.”

                Caroline finds herself rising to her feet in surprise, her gaze darting to Jenna over her father’s shoulder.

                “Ah, yes… your little spy.  Show her what fun we’ve had, Jenna,” Silas says, and Jenna swallows, before opening her mouth.

                Her tongue has been removed, and Caroline feels sick.

                “I will not accept betrayal, Caroline,” Silas says, his voice soft and cool.  “You either join me, or you join them and I kill you.”

                He whirls to Jenna, grabs her by the throat, and Caroline lets out a surprised shout as the woman erupts into flame.

                “Make your choice.”

                And the laptop screen goes black.

                Caroline has to get out of the manor, and she finds herself in the gardens.  Surrounded by flowers, she still feels suffocated.

                _She never asked for any of this.  Never wanted it._

All around her, life thrives, and she finds herself lashing out at it.  But as she tears at flowers, they draw on her powers, healing themselves, and she lets out an angry shriek, because she can’t even deal with her hurt properly when this happens.

                _She. Just. Wants. Them. To. Die._

Her powers lash out, and she can _feel_ the life surrounding her.  She’s not sure what makes her do it, but she finds herself grasping to that life and ordering it to _stop_.

                She watches in shock as the plants weaken and droop, and she might not have Niklaus’ connection to death… but her connection to life means she can cut it off for others.

                She touches a drooping flower, lets life flow into it once more.

                And as the garden around her comes to life, as the anger drains from her, a plot begins to form.

\---

                When she and Enzo fly out, it’s accompanied by her army.  They are going, ostensibly, to join with her father.

                He greets her, and all she can see when he smiles at her and hugs her close, is Jenna’s body turning to ashes.

                She’d had to tell Alaric that the woman he loved had been murdered, and she isn’t sure that he’ll recover from that.

                But Silas acts as though it never happened, as though an angel’s life was worth nothing, as long as it means Caroline is there.

                “I can find out their plans,” she tells him, and even just saying the words makes her want to be sick.

                If her father were sane, he would have felt guilt.  At the very least, he would be suspicious of her motives.

                Instead, he gives her his blessing to go to Kol and Klaus and play the double agent.

\---

                “Why are you here, Caroline?”

                Klaus is not surprised to see her.  He is, after all, marching to war against her father.  Of course she is here to prevent it.  But she’s blinded by love and desire for the approval of a mad man, and Klaus will not allow her to sway him.

                They may all believe that he will be the ruin of this world… but there will be no world _to_ ruin if Silas is not put down.

                She doesn’t say anything, and Klaus turns to look at her.  She stands just inside the entrance to his tent – it might be the twenty-first century, but angelic wars still remain in the old days – and her eyes seem to blaze with some emotion he doesn’t understand.

                “If you are here to stop me-”

                He’s cut off by her kiss.  She strides up to him and takes his face between her hands, pulling him down to seal their lips together.  It reminds him of the very first time she kissed him of her own volition, the way she had pulled him close, had tried to take control, until he reminded her that he is not a man that gives that up.

                He does that once more, whirling her around and lifting her onto the war table, not caring of the maps that are scattered there.  He pushes between her legs and pulls her body flush to his, bending her head back to get the proper angle to fully plunder her mouth with his. 

                “I thought you were done with me,” Klaus says when they break apart.  “That you were Cadre, and I could no longer destroy you.”

                “You march to war against my father… even miles apart, you’ve managed to find the way to break me” – she slides off the table and walks from him, her arms hugging her body – “he’s still mad, isn’t he?”

                “He sees it as his place to protect you,” Klaus replies neutrally.

                “Don’t mince words, Niklaus.  You’ve never cared for my feelings before, don’t start now.”

                “Is that how you view this?” Klaus growls, and he strides to her spinning her around forcefully, his fingers forming a biting grip on her arms.  “Do you view this as some way to hurt you?  _I am doing this because of you_!”

                Her lips part slightly as she stares up at him, and Klaus wants to haul her close again, kiss those lips and sink into her.  They communicate best when words aren’t involved, when it’s simply _them_ and their bodies.  Then he could say all the things he would never allow himself to verbalize.

                Instead, he releases his grip and runs his hand through his hair.

                “He makes the Earth tremble,” he says.  “And he refuses to adjust to what we are now.  I… you will not believe me, Caroline, but I do this so you don’t have to. Because you’ve seen one parent dead in front of you, and I will not have you see another.”

                “I believe you,” she says softly, and Klaus stills utterly, every muscle refusing to move.  “I… I truly do believe you.  But I cannot be protected from this, Klaus” – her touch is soft when she makes him look at her – “I do not know where we go once this is done… but I need to be a part of it.”

                “The one time I try to do the right thing,” he muttered, brushing her hair behind her ear. It is in his nature to view her as a spy for her father, yet he cannot bring himself to do so.  Not when she looks at him with those blue eyes filled with such determination.  He has known her for so very long, knows when she is lying to him. And this is not the face of a liar. “Welcome to the War Council, Caroline.”

                The War Council is, of course, Kol and Klaus and their respective Generals.  Caroline bristles when Kol drapes himself in a chair and smirks at her.

                “Now I wonder… are you truly here to kill daddy, or simply to report our plans to him?”

                His General, Davina, stands at his back.  She looks incredibly young, and always has, though Caroline knows the other woman is older than she is and has a brilliant tactical mind.  But her expression is tight, making her look like a petulant teenager.

                “Don’t pout, Davina,” Kol says to her, patting her hand.  “If Caroline does betray us, I doubt even the time she spent in his bed will protect her from Nik’s wrath.”

                Enzo tenses at her back, but Caroline holds up a hand to stop him from stepping up.

                “I’m not here to play your games, Kol,” she replies coldly. “I put an end to that when you tried to make it seem as though you knew some dark secret of me.”

                “Don’t I?”

                “Enzo was there as well, remember?  And Lexie.  And there is nothing that you would know that would affect my life.  But I know something that can affect _yours_ ; because you might have been Silas’ General, you might have known he was _capable_ of great things… But I’m the only one that has _seen_ it.  I watched him burn my mother to cinders, and then burn Otukan as well.  And I’m the only one that can get us the moments of distraction we’ll need to…”

                She trailed off, her throat closing, because _dammit_ , Silas was her father.  He was…

                Why did she give these men the power to _break_ her like this?

                “The distraction we’ll need to put him down.”

                “And how do you plan to do that?” Kol drawls out.  Caroline surveys him for a moment and considers simply walking away.  She doesn’t want to deal with this man that smirks at her, as though he knows a secret.

                _He doesn’t – he knows nothing of her._

But she can’t, because the rest of the Cadre sits and watches from afar, waiting to see what will happen next.  They truly are the ones with their heads in the sand, believing that all will turn out well, when it is their _duty_ to act, not observe.

                “Don’t worry about the how,” she says at last to Kol, and then looks at Klaus.  “You have to decide.  You either trust me, or you do not.”

                Kol snorts, his opinion on the matter quite obvious, but Klaus is silent.  He and Caroline are caught in a silent battle wills.  She wants him to show that somewhere, no matter how deep, there is a part of him capable of this.  Capable of _trust_ , capable of something that isn’t destructive.

                But he has been alive so very long, and she truly doesn’t know if he’s capable of such a thing.

                He walks to her, cups her face in his hand, and looks down at her.

                “You cannot be seriously contemplating that request, Nik,” Kol snaps.  “She is his _daughter_.”

                “And you were his General,” Klaus replies, never once looking away from Caroline.  “The most loyal of soldiers… yet here you stand.”

                _Yet here we all stand_ , and isn’t that the crux of it all?  There is no trust in the room.  There is only a history of pain and mystery.  Yet, she had finally said it…

                _.  I watched him burn my mother to cinders, and then burn Otukan as well._

                Seven centuries of wondering, of having her dance around the topic… and now he knows.  The topic of which she has danced around for centuries, finally revealed in a single sentence.  On that says so much… and yet nothing at all.

                _Why did he burn her?  What happened in those lost years?_

And he knows that he must make his choice now.  He can hold to the distrust that has kept him alive so very long… Or for once, he can do what she has been asking him for so very long.  He can give her the one thing that would bridge the distance that still lies between them.

                He can trust her.

                “We attack at dawn.  Do what you can,” he says to her, knowing that she’ll be going to her father.  That she could tell Silas everything.

                Or she could be the key to their victory.

                “You’re trusting me,” she whispers, and there’s something like awe in her eyes.  “I wasn’t sure you were capable of it.”

                “I’m not,” Klaus replies.  “Yet you make me want to be.”

                She presses a hungry kiss to his lips at his words, and he returns it.  He wants to hold her there, because there he can see her.  There she cannot betray him.  There her father cannot hurt her.

                He releases her.

                But despite all his desires for her, to be able to trust her, there is still a devil riding him, and when he meets Kol’s eyes, doubts rise in him.

                “If you betray us,” he says, making Caroline pause in the entrance of the tent.  She doesn’t look back, but she is tense.  He knows what she expects, and he gives her it.  “You will die with him.”

                “Of course,” she replies, never looking back.  “Because no one betrays Niklaus, right?  I had almost thought…”

                She doesn’t finish the thought, simply leaves, Enzo following close at her back.

                Klaus rubs his chest and wonders if this pain is what she felt that day she banished him from her court.

\---

                “They come at dawn.”

                Silas looks up as Caroline joins him.  She tries not to let him see the pain that Niklaus can still make her feel.  This game is far too delicate for her to allow emotions to get in the way.  Silas must believe in her loyalty absolutely.

                “How did you convince them to trust you?” Silas returns, his eyes narrowing on her face, and Caroline meets his gaze directly.

                “They don’t.  If we are not successful, I will die with you.  I’d rather that not be an option.”

                She contemplates the map, running her fingers along it.

                “They are infants,” Silas replies with a careless wave of his hand.  “I’ll take care of them.”

                “Kol perhaps, but Klaus is not so weak as you think,” Caroline replies.  “And the loss of his Reborn… his dislikes when others destroy his toys.”

                “Ah, yes… because only he can destroy his toys, correct, daughter?” Caroline swallows when Silas’ lips quirk into a cruel smirk.  “Your emotions are dangerous.”

                “He betrayed my trust, betrayed _me_.  He tried to kill me more than once,” Caroline’s fingers dig into the table.  “I am tired of him ever being there, father.”

                “Yet when I first offered, you refused to let me kill him.”

                “Emotions are dangerous,” she replies with a bitter quirk of her lips.  “And I grow weary of letting the biggest danger into my bed.”

                “Then we fly at dawn to meet them. Allow them to see their true loyalties,” Silas replies.

                “We do,” she agrees.

                And that’s what they do.  At dawn, they meet the other Archangels and their legions, and Kol’s lips twist in disgust at her betrayal, and NIklaus’ eyes are dark.

                “Did you truly think that you would win this?” Silas calls to the other Ancient.  “That she would truly choose you?”

                He reaches out his hand to her, and Klaus meets her gaze.  Half betrayed, half pleading her not to do this… and oh, ye of little faith.  But when had Klaus ever truly trusted?

                She clasps her father’s hand with her own.

                And as he turns a victorious smirk at Klaus, she can feel Silas’ life force like an inferno around her. 

                “I’m sorry, Father,” she says, and even as Silas’ gaze shoots to her, Caroline calms that inferno.

                Her gift is life, but with life also comes death.  She had realized it that day in her garden, when she had grown so _angry_ at the life that surrounded her, when she had commanded it to _stop_ , and it had.

                Silas is far more powerful than the garden, but she doesn’t need to kill him alone – couldn’t, even if she wanted to.  She digs her fingers into his skin until blood pools, and forces her will on him, even as his shoves back.  She can feel herself weakening under the force, but desperately clings to it anyway.

                And then Klaus and Kol are there, and both of them shove their fire into him, and she has wounded his powers enough that he can’t stop them.  So he _burns_.  He burns, just as Elizabeth did, and Caroline’s powers, still tied to him… she burns too.

                _It’s just like Otukan_ she thinks weakly, and isn’t it simply divine justice, that she falls toward that city as her father dies above her.

                Eight hundred years later, and Elizabeth’s will would finally be recognized.

                Otukan would become her grave.

\----

                Klaus realizes what has happened at the same moment as Silas.  He tears away from the Ancient as Caroline’s body hurtles toward the ruins below.

                “Nik – we have to _finish_ this!” Kol shouts, and Klaus knows he’s right, but duty wars with love… _and God, but anything good in him starts with Caroline_.

                And even known that Silas will be able to heal if they don’t end him now, he lets himself drop… but a burning figure hurtles past him.

                _Silas_.

                And even weakened, the sheer _speed_ that the other man achieves shocks even Klaus.  But Silas surrounds Caroline’s body with his, and uses his ruined wings to slow them as much as possible.

                When they hit the earth, it’s with a force that they can survive, but that will leave both injured.  Klaus falls into a free fall after them, not caring of the armies that watch the Archangels with shock, or Kol, who he knows will never forgive him this.

                He lands on the ground with enough force that his legs actually strain, and the power he had put into attacking Silas has left him burned and weak, but he doesn’t care.

                _He needs Caroline._

_He needs her to_ live _._

They had fallen apart in their collision with the Earth, father and daughter, but Caroline has somehow managed to drag herself back to him.  She slumps, her body swaying, but her hands frame Silas’ face.

                And Klaus keeps his distance, holds Kol back when he would attack once more.

                “If we don’t finish it, _we all die!”_ Kol growls angrily, but Klaus doesn’t care.  He will give Caroline this one thing.

                She had been hurt, when he had believed she had betrayed him… so he will let her have this moment with her father.

                When he thinks Caroline will faint over Silas’ body, Klaus steps up to end the man.

                Instead Caroline places her hands over the wound he and Kol have left on Silas’ chest.

                And then the world ignites.

\---

She doesn’t cry.

                She cradles her father’s head in her lap and looks down into his eyes, smoothing away the lines at the corners.  She feels her heart breaking, but she does not cry.  Her body is burned and broken, but still that doesn’t hurt as much as the knowledge that _she_ did this.  That even though it was necessary…

                If not for her, he would not be here.

                “C-Caroline,” he chokes out, through lips that have begun to turn blue.  Caroline swallows and continues to trace the features of his face with her fingertips.  She will memorize those features, the face of the man that had killed her mother.  The face of the man that had loved her, even when he wasn’t truly capable of the emotion.

                “I love you, father,” she whispers, feeling the emotion in her heart.  Because Silas didn’t know how to love, nor had Elizabeth, but somehow their daughter did.  Somehow Caroline could feel all the pain that her parents could not, and she closes her eyes and presses a kiss to his forehead.  “I will always love you.”

                She can feel Niklaus reaching for her shoulder, but this isn’t a burden he can take.  Isn’t one she would allow him to take.  He already has too much darkness, is already incapable of caring… hadn’t he been so quick to believe her able to betray him? 

                He might love her, but he will never trust her.  And a love without trust would only turn to hate.

                She summons what power she can.  It is almost gone, used on weakening Silas, but there is just enough there for her to summon her fire.  She places her hands in the same place Klaus and Kol’s had been… _and then she shoves_.

                And in the end, she is left with empty arms.

                And as she slumps forward, she thinks that empty arms are all she will ever have.

\---

                Klaus stumbles to Caroline’s side and sits heavily next to her as her fire calms.  Nothing remains of Silas except the wounds they both wear.  They had finished him, and she slumps on the ground, her eyes closed.  When he had seen her with Silas, he had assumed the worst…

                But Gods, she had been glorious, working her magic against the man she called father.

                “It’s done then.”

                He turns Kol who has managed to stumble to them.  Like Klaus, he shows the wounds of the powers used to destroy Silas.  Angelfire is not kind to those it is used against, or those that use it.  His eyes dart down to Caroline, whom Klaus has gathered against his chest protectively.

                “I underestimated your Little Feldgling,” Kol muses, slumping down next to him and running a hand over Caroline’s hair.  “I thought she would betray us… but she managed to bring him to his knees with nary a death of our people.”

                Silas’ army is at a loss.  Their Archangel is dead, the one they had turned against is not known as merciful, and it had all happened so very quickly.  Klaus runs a hand along Caroline’s face and nods at Enzo as he joins them.

                “That’s it then?” he asks them, her expression carefully neutral.  “We can all go home?  No more plots or psychological manipulation?” 

                “So judgmental,” Kol murmurs, and Klaus gives him a sharp, narrow eyed look, because he sounds far too amused.  But the other Archangel ignores him to meet Enzo’s eyes..  “Someday, you will understand all of this, both you and your Sire.  I saw what Silas did to her once… so did you, or do you not recall? Did you ever consider that perhaps I wished to prevent a repeat?”

                “That would require a heart, Kol,” Enzo replies coolly, jerking her chin from his grip.  “And we both know you don’t have one… isn’t that true?”

                Kol’s smirk is slightly bitter as he straightens to his feet.  He begins to walk away, and though a small part of Klaus wonders if he plans on walking all the way to a safe spot, the larger part really can’t care.

                “Hearts are a dangerous thing, Enzo.  Just ask Niklaus, or young Caroline,” Kol says, glancing back, and his eyes land and hold with Klaus’ rather than the blonde who has curled herself into Klaus’ side.  “You really should try to take care with yours, Nik.”

                Their gazes remain locked for one more long moment, and Klaus strokes a hand through Caroline’s hair, even as he begins to realize what he must do.  Because even when he had _known_ he could trust her – had felt it in his _bones_ – he had been unable to do so.  Had instead hurt her once more, right before she was forced to break her own heart over her father.

                He gives Kol a sharp nod, and then turns his gaze back to Caroline.

                “He’s gone,”  Enzo murmurs, once Kol has left, though Klaus knows it’s not Kol that he speaks of.  “He’s really gone.”

                Klaus says nothing, and when Enzo turns his gaze to him, to the woman in his arms, Klaus knows what is going to come next.

                “I will take her home.  To heal. To grieve.”

                And Caroline will grieve.  Almost her entire life spent parentless, and still this will cause her untold hurt.  It would have been kinder, had Silas never awoken.

                Had Kol and Klaus been successful in their first attempt to end him.

                He wonders if she’ll someday be able to summon the same grief for him.

                _Yes_.  He knows the answer with a certainty matched only by the knowledge that if he continues as he has been, someday she will _have_ to feel that grief.

                _Power or Caroline_.  Once the answer would have been so easy.  Power, and Caroline’s broken body at his feet.  Hadn’t he tried so hard to achieve that?  He looks down at Caroline, and then leans down, kissing her lips.  It’s soft – probably the softest kiss he has ever given her.  Had she been awake, perhaps she would have known what he was trying to say with it.

                But she is not, so instead he hands her to Enzo, watches the General fly away with the only person that had ever made anyone, including Klaus himself, believe he had a heart.

                God help him, but he’s made his choice.

\---

                Caroline awakens to familiar brown eyes, and she’s never been so confused.

                “Katherine?” she asks, but why would Elijah’s consort be there?  For all that they are friendly; he had not involved himself against her father.

                “Not quite,” the woman replies, and her features seem softer, her voice kinder.

                _Elena_.

                “You never leave Refuge,” Caroline says, struggling to sit up.  Elena joins her, carefully helping her.

                “Be careful, Caroline.  You’re still weak,” the healer warns, before turning back to her tools.  “And Enzo brought me here.  Normally I wouldn’t… but it’s safe for me to leave Refuge now, so I took advantage.”

                “ _Safe_ …?”

                Caroline is confused, because the only reason Elena had stayed so close to Refuge was because… _Niklaus_.

                “Where is he?” she asks, because she remembers her father saving her.  Remembers making the final blow… and though she isn’t sure, she swears that she felt Klaus’ lips on hers.  So very, very soft.

                _A kiss good-bye_.

                “I… no one knows, Caroline,” Elena says, going very still and not looking at her.  “Except perhaps Stefan, and he will not say.”

                The name holds pain, because there was history between Elena and Stefan, Caroline knows, but right now she cannot think on that.

                “I need to speak to Stefan.” She pushes the blankets off her and begins to rise, but Elena is there, pushing her back into the bed.

                “You can’t, Caroline. You’ll hurt yourself-”

                “I am an Archangel.  I’ll be fine-”

                “You’re pregnant!”

                They are the only two words that could make her freeze.  Her hands fall to her abdomen, and she stares at Elena.

                “I… that can’t be… it’s impossible-”

                Except it’s _not_.  She and Niklaus, they had… after Silas had awoken…

                Her fingers dig into her stomach and she leans over, suddenly sick.  Elena leaps forward with a pail in hand to catch the vomit, and she strokes Caroline’s hair as she empties her stomach.

                “I’m so sorry, Caroline,” she murmurs, and Caroline shakes her head, tears falling down her cheeks.

                “I need to talk to Stefan,” she says, and it becomes a mantra.  “I need to talk to Stefan.  IneedtotalktoStefan.”

                Elena gets up during the panic attack, and at some point she is replaced by another presence.  It’s not Bonnie or Enzo, but Caroline still finds herself clinging to the offered hand.

                When she finally calms down, she looks up into Stefan’s solemn eyes.

                “What did he do?” she croaks out.

                “He would have destroyed you, Caroline.”

                “ _What did he do, Stefan?!_ ” she shrieks, and Stefan falls to his knees, paling before Caroline realizes she’s used her powers, is cutting off his life, and she lets up, clenching her fists into the blankets.

                “Sleep,” Stefan says, his voice hoarse as he struggles to his feet.  “He chose to Sleep.”

                Caroline clutches her stomach and stares at the wall. 

                “Why?” she asks, her voice soft.

                “You know why,” Stefan replies.

                _Because he was insane, because I killed my father… because he didn’t want me to have to do that to him._

“I’m pregnant,” she says, and she meets Stefan’s shocked gaze.  “it’s Klaus’.”

                “I… wasn’t expecting that.”

                “Neither was I.”

                They both lapsed into silence, until Caroline reached out and touched his hand again.

                “You were loyal to Niklaus for centuries.  I would like for you to be loyal to me.”

                She knew that he didn’t always approve of or like her, but when Stefan went to his knee, swore his fealty, he never once hesitated.

                “When he comes back,” Caroline says after it’s done – because Niklaus _would_ come back; even it takes a millennium, her child _will_ know it’s father, “we’ll make sure his kingdom remains.”

                “Of course,” Stefan agrees.

                Caroline lies down to rest once more, but rest never truly comes. Her mind is whirling with what she must do.

                Protect Niklaus’ territory.

                Protect her own territory.

                Protect her child.

                Get rid of what remains of his damn Reborn.

                She chuckles softly to herself.  Well, at least the time spent waiting for him to return would not be boring.

_End Part V_


	6. Epilogue We Sink

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here it is, guys. The epilogue! I promised there would be a happy ending, and I hope this successfully delivers on that promise.

The world outside rages.

                Caroline watches it through her window and thinks with wry amusement that it’s just like Niklaus, to make the entire world aware of his approach.

                The amusement fades to be replaced with apprehension.

                It’s only been 700 years.  Her father had only slept for 700 years.

                “Mother?”

                The voice makes her turn, and she smiles to see Nicholas.  He joins her at the window, and she reaches up to ruffle his hair.  The color came from her – the _only_ thing that came from her.  Otherwise, he’s all Niklaus, right to the dimples that cut into his cheeks when he grins at her.

                “You need to cut your hair,” she tells him, and he rolls his eyes.  He reminds her too often that she was only a century older than he is when she Ascended, that she shouldn’t treat him like a child any longer.

                But he is her son, and she thinks she will always treat him like a child to some extent.

                “It’s my father, isn’t it?” He asks her, turning his blue gaze out the window.  He’s more thoughtful than Klaus was, her precious boy.  And he has a reckless streak that sometimes worries her. 

                “Stefan says he thinks it is,” Caroline replies.  “And he’s the only one that knows Klaus’ resting place.”

                Nicholas presses a kiss onto her head and hugs her shoulders.

                “It will be okay.”

\---

                Nick had grown up with stories of his father.  He knew that he looked much like the Ancient that her mother still grieved for.  From Stefan, she had heard stories of the leader he had been.  From Enzo, she had heard stories of how he had fought.

                From Katherine he heard what an asshole the man had been.

                Nick had no doubt that his father _had_ been an asshole; he knew how his mother had Ascended, after all.  But Caroline had also stayed loyal to the man for 700 years when there was more than one opportunity for her to make an alliance that very likely would have made her life easier.

                Instead, she had maintained an iron hold on power over not just her own territory in Australia, but also his father’s lands in North America, not even giving them to Enzo, when he had Ascended.

                Asshole or not, there had to have been something pretty spectacular about Niklaus, to inspire that sort of loyalty in Nick’s mother.

                For seven hundred years, the man had been the subject of most of Nick’s bedtime stories.  He had eagerly listened to the tales anyone would tell him… but a story was not the same as a father.  Hearing of the man as some sort of tall tale…

                Well, sometimes Nick wished he could simply _know_ his father.

                700 years, and he might finally have the chance.

                He knows that his mother disapproved of when he acted “recklessly,” as she called it.  But he was hardly a fledgling anymore, and as she had pointed out, Stefan was the only that knew where Klaus had gone to Sleep.

                So Nick follows the other man when he leaves his mother’s manor.

                Nick had thought they would make their way to New Orleans, but instead they travel only a short distance, into abandoned land in the Outback.

                “He didn’t want to go far from her, even in Sleep.”

                It doesn’t surprise Nick that Stefan knew he was being followed, but it does make him grit his teeth.

                “We need to work on that,” Stefan notes as Nick joins him.  “You have power; with your parents you would have to.  But it will only take you so far.”

                “I know,” Nick mutters, before looking out at what appears to be empty land.  “Did he really care about her so much?  The tales I hear… what you and Katherine and Enzo tell me, it seems very at odds with what mother does.”

                “That’s because your mother is the only one that knew the… softer side of your father” – Stefan digs under the sand, until he pulls up a door that has been buried.  He heads down the steps, and Nick follows – “he was well on his way to becoming a monster before he met your mother.  Even after… he didn’t choose to Sleep because he was _tired_ , Nick.  He did it because he knew that staying would mean destroying Caroline.”

                “He didn’t know about me, did he?” Nick asks.  “Mother has never said it outright, but I came to conclusions.”

                This hidden place is dark and miserable, and not at all suitable for the resting place of an Ancient.

                Nick supposes that is the purpose.

                They come to a room, empty but for a platform on which a prone form lies.

                “He never knew,” Stefan agrees at last.  “Your mother didn’t know until Klaus had already left.”

                This is his father, with white wings mottled with brown.  Nick rustles his own.  He had always been bitter over it, that they were so plain.  The only thing unique was that his mottles were fiery orange rather than brown, but in comparison to Caroline’s sunset wings… they had always seemed so _boring_.

                His mother had always told him they were beautiful.

                Nick takes a hesitant step towards the unconscious figure, and Stefan leaps forward, hastily pulling him back.

                “There are safeguards in place,” he growls, when Nick would have snapped at him.  “Use your brain, boy.  You have a good one.”

                He does, and Nick knows his actions were foolish… but this is the father he has never known.  He should be forgiven a misstep. 

                As though Niklaus can sense them so close, the world around them rumbles.  It sends dust and debris flying down, and Nick and Stefan are tossed apart.  It’s violent – Nick doesn’t know if it’s because he’s so much closer to the source, or if it truly is more violent.  All he knows is the world around him seems to be off balance.

                The silence that follows is eerie.

                Nick gets to his feet, and looks to his father.

                No one is there.

                He opens his mouth to call to Stefan, only to find himself instead pressed into the stone of the underground chamber.

                “Who are you?” the voice is a croak, a testament to its lack of use in the last seven centuries.

                And Nick finally understands why there was so often a hint of sadness in his mother’s eyes as he grew older.  Because looking at Niklaus is almost like looking in a mirror.  Nick’s hair is lighter… but otherwise he is truly the image of his father. 

                It is one thing to be told so, but another to see it, and in his fascination, Nick can’t think of a thing to say.

                Of course, his father’s hand threatening to crush his wind pipe would make speaking difficult anyways.

                “Who are you?” Klaus repeats.

                “Klaus, look at him,” Stefan demands, stepping up behind the man he had called Sire for so many centuries.  “You know who he is.”

                Klaus does as Stefan orders, he truly _looks_ at Nick.  His only reaction is a slight widening of his eyes, and then he drops his son, spinning away from him to face Stefan.

                “She didn’t tell me,” Klaus growls out.  “Did she loathe me so very much?”

                “She didn’t _know_ ,” Nick replies with a scowl, because father or not, Klaus is not allowed to speak of Caroline in that tone, the one that doesn’t hold the respect that his mother deserves.  “Right, Stefan?”

                “She found out once you were already asleep,” Stefan agrees, inclining his head in Nick’s direction.  “I didn’t wake you as I didn’t think you…”

                Stefan trails off, and Klaus lets out a coarse, bitter laugh.

                “You didn’t think I would be much of a father as the man I was?” he replies, his tone cold and distant, and this isn’t at all how Nick imagined this going, meeting his father for the first time.

                He hadn’t expected Klaus to be so… _cruel_.

                “Maybe you shouldn’t have woken now.” The words are out before Nick can stop them, and Klaus whirls to face him while Stefan eyes widen and he rapidly shakes his head.  But Nick is reckless and wild, and in seven centuries, no one has ever told him what parent he gets that from.

                So he leaves the words hanging there and whirls away. 

                If this is his father… well, maybe Nick was better off when Klaus was just a story.

\---

                “Well, that was rather spectacularly done,” Stefan drawls out after Nick had made his escape.  Klaus, staring after the retreating boy – _his son_ – whirls to face the man that had been his loyal General for centuries.

                “How long has it been?” he asks, because he can’t think about… about _his son_ , and what it means that he is full grown, and how much that means Klaus has missed.

                “700 years, give or take a decade or two,” Stefan replies, leaning against the wall of the cavern.  “He’s strong you know.  She named him Nicholas.”

                _Nicholas_ , the modernization of his own name. 

                Looking at him at very nearly been like looking in the mirror.  Except the hair… he had Caroline’s hair, and her nose. 

                “700 years,” Klaus murmurs.  He climbs the stone steps that Nicholas had just used.  Stefan is at his back, but remains silent.  When he steps out of the catacombs he had made his tomb, the sun is shining, but the sand is wet, and he sees several cracked stones.  His awakening had not been gentle, and the sight makes him smirk. 

                “How do you feel?” Stefan asks, his voice hesitant.  Klaus bites back a laugh at the question… it may have been seven centuries, but surely Stefan isn’t so changed that he’ll beat around the bush?

                “You mean do I feel sane?” he bites back, and Stefan looks away, his jaw tight. Klaus gives a shrug.  “I didn’t feel _insane_ to begin with.  I suppose time will tell… or perhaps it will be my first meeting with Caroline.  Will I try to kill her or not?”

                He expects Stefan to continue to keep his silence – his General had made it clear that while he respected Caroline for what she had achieved, he did not approve of her relationship with Klaus – but instead the other angel steps into his space, his eyes turning fierce.

                “You won’t lay a _finger_ on her, Niklaus.”

                Klaus narrows his eyes and his hand snaps out, grabbing Stefan by the throat and lifting him until he’s on his toes, his thumb cutting off Stefan’s air. 

                For a moment, he truly plans to kill him.  He is thousands of older, an Ancient, and he has had 700 years to rest and recuperate his incredible power.

                700 years to be haunted by dreams and nightmares and regrets, and he releases his hold on Stefan, letting the other man stumble away with a gasp.  Klaus flexes his fingers and calms his breathing, because isn’t this why he went to sleep?  Because violence and power had come to mean so much to him, that he could no longer…

                “I need Caroline,” he says, his fingernails digging into his palms.  “I need to see my…”

                He hesitates, because what _was_ Caroline to him?  She had been so much seven centuries ago – lover, hesitant ally, enemy, and now he no longer knows what to call her except…

                _He had chosen to Sleep, and it had all been for_ her _._

“I need to see my mate,” Klaus says, and the word feels foreign on his tongue, yet somehow _right_.  Angels often took lovers, sometimes for centuries, but it meant something more to be called _mate_.  Mate meant forever, and when forever was a possibility, making such promises became a serious matter.

                “An interesting claim to make on a woman that you were willing to kill the last time you saw her.”

                Klaus frowns and looks at Stefan.  It’s so easy to think of the man as his General of old, but though nothing has changed physically, there _is_ a difference.  A split in loyalties.

                “You are hers now,” Klaus remarks, and he shouldn’t be so surprised, because hasn’t Caroline always inspired loyalty in those she chose as her own?

                “When you chose Sleep, she gave me a home,” Stefan admits.  “I’m her General now.”

                “Lorenzo would not have so easily given up his place at her side,” Klaus points out with furrowed brows.  “What happened?”

                “He Ascended.”

                That is another surprise, one that is not particularly welcome.  Klaus knew he would have to reclaim his home from _someone_ , but knowing that it will be Lorenzo, who had Caroline’s back for so very long.

                He hopes the other man will be sensible and –

                “He claims Otukan,” Stefan continues.  “There were some… _disagreements_ , at the beginning.  But territory disputes were figured out.  Caroline was quite… _determined_ to keep both your lands and hers.  She very nearly killed Genevieve.  It was spectacular.”

                Klaus closes his eyes and imagine it, Caroline the Avenging Angel against Genevieve’s deathly beauty.  Of course Caroline would have won; she would have refused anything else.

                “Ruled my lands and raised my son,” Klaus murmurs almost ruefully.  All things he should have been here to do, yet couldn’t, because he was too mad on power. And God, but he loves her.

                And perhaps his earlier musings were wrong.  Perhaps he _has_ changed, because that thought – _love_ – doesn’t make him fear as it had before.  Instead, he wants _her_.

                “I need to see her,” he says again.

                This time, Stefan just nods and takes to the air, Klaus close behind.

\---

                Nicholas lands, and there is a darkness in his gaze that Caroline recognizes almost immediately.

                He has met his father.

                “Why did you wait for him?” he asks when he sees her there.  His blue eyes are dark and angry, and Caroline has to resist shaking her head.  He is so very much like Niklaus… of course their first meeting would go awry without Caroline there to buffer it.  “What did you see in him that was worth spending centuries as a bloody _nun_ , because I don’t see it.”

                “He’s your father, I would rather hope you wouldn’t see the same things in him as I did.”

                Nick’s expression tells her that he isn’t amused, nor will he be put off by light hearted distractions.  Caroline sighs and entwines her arm with her son’s, leading him down the corridors of their home.

                “I met him when I was little more than a Fledgling,” she says.  “A hundred years old and out in the world for the first time.  Niklaus exploded into my life, and I thought his presence would scald me.”

                “It did,” Nick remarks.  “He tried to kill you.”

                “Ah, yes, the tales you’ve heard from Katherine, because she always did love the thought of poisoning you against him if she could.”

                “Did she tell me any lies?”

                “No,” Caroline acknowledges wryly, even as she remembers the fights she’d had with Elijah’s mate over the tales the dark haired woman carried.  “No, she didn’t need to.  The truth was tempestuous enough.”

                “Yet you spoke to me of him as though he were a good man,” Nick says with a scowl, and Caroline laughs.

                “Now _that_ is a lie.  I have called him great, but I would never call him _good_ ” – their walk has brought them to her sitting room, and she leads him out onto the balcony.  The storm that had raged earlier has ceased, and the world is eerily calm, a sure sign that another storm is coming, though Caroline thinks it will not be a physical one – “no Archangel is _good_ , Nick.  Not if they’ve lasted for any length of time.”

                She’s sacrificed her own morals over the centuries, many times, to protect the lands she calls her own.  It’s far easier to understand Niklaus now that she’s had a taste of the power that he held even before her birth.  She will never _forget_ the events around her Ascension… she simply can acknowledge the _why_ of it now.  And perhaps it’s because it’s been 700 years, and holding onto old grudges seems foolish when she looks back at Klaus’ actions.

                He had chosen to Sleep, rather than cause her more pain.  And though she’ll never excuse the pain he _did_ cause… she cannot ignore the choice he ultimately made either.

                “So that’s it then.  He’ll come here and you’ll just welcome him back?”

                Caroline cups her son’s cheeks and tugs him down to press a kiss to his forehead.  He’s so filled with anger and fire, this boy of hers, so protective over her… and she’s so used to thinking of his similarities to his father, that maybe she’s failed to see the ones he shares with her.  She was like him once, filled with such righteous fire, before time and power taught her to properly play the game of Archangels.      

                “You will be incredibly powerful one day,” she says pulling back and looking into his eyes.  “But I hope that it’s centuries from now.”

                “You were only a century older than me-”

                “And not at all prepared.  I survived by surrounding myself with good and loyal people, and because I was powerful enough to get lucky.  I don’t want that for you, Nick.”

                “We weren’t talking about me.  We were talking about my father.”

                “He makes a horrible first impression, doesn’t he?” she smiles at him and squeezes his hand.  “Let him make a second one.”

                “He might not even come,” Nick grumbles, but he leans against the railing, his gaze focused hungrily on the horizon, and despite his anger on Caroline’s behalf, she knows that he has yearned for this his entire life.

                Yearned for his father.

                Enzo and Stefan had taught him to fight, even Kol had come to play a role, but none had been his _father_ and Nick had been very aware of that.

                “I don’t want to see you hurt again,” Nick admits at last, though he doesn’t take his gaze from the horizon.  “And I know that history shows he is very capable of doing so.”

                Caroline just ruffles his hair, and she wishes she could promise that she _won’t_ be hurt… but she can’t be sure. 

                Not until Niklaus arrives.

\---

                Bonnie is the first to meet them, and Klaus smirks when he sees her.

                “The more things change,” he muses as he halts before the dark skinned vampire who crosses her arms and gives a sniff.

                “Well, you don’t appear to have changed at _all_ ,” she comments, looking at him with a speculative eye.  “I sort of hoped you’d stay asleep.”

                “Bonnie,” Stefan warns, because of course he knows Klaus’ temper and fears for the vampire.

                Yet Klaus simply feels… _amused_.

                “I’m not here to kill anyone,” he says, moving around Bonnie to continue to Caroline’s manor.  It also looks much the same, though he can pick out cameras and other bits of technology that are foreign to him.  An old house in a new world.  “Where is your Sire?”

                “You can’t just come in here demanding to see the Archangel!” Bonnie snaps.  “That’s not how this works.”

                “I’m not here to see the _Archangel_ ,” Klaus drawls in reply, tossing a smirk over his shoulder.  “I’m here to see my _mate_.”

                And he’s apparently rendered the vampire mute, because she just gapes after him.  Klaus gives a low chuckle and continues into Caroline’s home.  If Bonnie won’t show him to her, then he’ll just wander until he finds her himself.

                It doesn’t take long.  He finds the corridor that houses her rooms, and before he can reach her door it opens, and there she is.

                Physically she has not changed of course.  She’s still the slim, beautiful blonde that he remembers meeting in Elijah’s court.  But the differences are there in her eyes.  They’d once burned with a righteous fire that threatened to burn everything he was, but she’s matured.  There is a new darkness there, one that could only be borne of centuries as an Archangel.

                And that darkness makes the light of her that much more addicting, because it’s still there as well, and it brings him up short and speechless, which he hadn’t expected.

                He’s so caught up in this first sight of her, that he doesn’t realize that their son is at her back, not until he fidgets and flares his wings in discomfort.  It drags Klaus’ gaze away from Caroline, to see that Nicholas’ wings are white and mottled, just like Klaus’ own.  Though the mottles hold the fire that had always been reflected in Caroline’s unique wings.

                “He has my wings.”

                Caroline blinks, and Klaus does as well, because he hadn’t meant for those to be his first words to her.  Yet now they are, and _he_ feels like the Fledgling, foolish and awkward.  Until she giggles.

                It’s incredibly pathetic, but at the sound the world _stops_.  He takes a step toward her and it starts again.

                “Hello, Little Fledgling,” he says, a smile curving his lips at the sight of her, her hand covering her lips to muffle her mirth.

                “I’m not that young anymore,” she points out, dropping her hand.  She wants to come to him, he can tell, but their history lies between them, making her hesitate.

                “You’ll always be my Little Fledgling,” he replies, and it’s going to have to be him for once.  He will have to be the one to bridge this gap between them, caused by his own actions and insanity.  He has no idea how to do it.

                So he closes the distance between them and cups her face in his hands and simply _looks_ at her. He leans down, rests his forehead against hers, and they stare at each other.

                “Klaus,” she murmurs, her breath mingling with his.

                “Caroline,” he returns.

                And he closes that final distance, pressing his lips against hers.  It’s all it takes, her hands come up to clutch at his, and she opens her mouth to him.  It’s warm and wet and hungry, and for the first time in Klaus’ memories, it doesn’t come with the bitter after taste of regret.

                He is in love with this woman.  He has been for nearly 1400 years… and though it might have taken 700 years of separation, he thinks he’s finally ready to learn _how_ to love her.

                A throat clears awkwardly, and Caroline tears her lips away from his and looks over her shoulder to where their son is very carefully looking anything that isn’t them.

                “Sorry, Nick,” she says, and steps back from Klaus, her tongue darting out to lick her lips.  Klaus hesitantly releases her, his hands feeling cold without her skin under them.  But she moves to Nick’s side, and the boy looks down at her, dimples cutting into his cheeks, and Klaus swallows, his throat suddenly thick.

                Caroline reaches up to run fingers through Nick’s hair, hair that Klaus knows will never be neat, because his own has never been neat.  In turn, he bends his knees slightly, so she can reach his hair more easily. 

                His mate.  His son.  And never once in all his years of life had Klaus _ever_ contemplated having this.

                “I don’t want you to hurt her,” Nick says, breaking his gaze from Caroline’s to meet Klaus’.  “Growing up, she was always there.  Even with her Archangel duties, she _still_ managed to be there” – Klaus’ gaze darted to Caroline, then back to their son, because Nick was right.  The duties of an Archangel were not easy, nor were those of mother.  Yet Caroline had been both – “so I don’t want you to hurt her.  I won’t threaten you, because we both know that I can’t.  But I’m also _your_ son” – and when Nick lifts his chin like that, Klaus can only think of how similar it is to Caroline – “and if you want to know me?  You won’t hurt her.”

                They stand there in silence, Nick’s gaze dark and defiant, and Klaus watches the boy closely.

                _His son_.

                And though he had never, in all his millennium of life, contemplated being a father… he wants to know this boy – this _man_ , that holds pieces of both him and Caroline.

                So though he knows it will not be easy, that there is 700 years of Nicholas’ life to catch up on, Klaus gives a sharp nod and offers his hand.  Nick clasps it with his own, and seems to hesitate.  Finally, his jaw tightens and he pulls Klaus in, his arms a hard band.

                Klaus is shocked at first.  He cannot remember being hugged by anyone but Caroline – Tatia probably had, but she is a distant memory in his mind – and at first he doesn’t know what to do.  But slowly his arms come up, clasping the boy back.

                It lasts just a handful of seconds, and then he is watching his son’s retreating back, but somehow Klaus feels as though his world has changed.

                “He’s the best of both of us,” Caroline says softly, and he looks down at her.  She reaches out and twines their fingers together, and that touch tethers him back to the world that seems to be shifting so rapidly beneath his feet.  “He’s our greatest accomplishment.”

                He reaches over, runs his hand under her hair, to the nape of her neck, and kisses her again.  Because _this_ is something he recognizes.  _This_ is something he knows.

                It’s so much better, yet still so painfully familiar, the feel of her warm body pressed to his.

                “I want to take you to bed,” Klaus says, his voice a growl when they pull back.  “But I’m afraid I don’t quite know if that’s proper.”

                “When have you ever cared about proper?” she replies, a smile hovering around her lips.

                “Since my last memory is of nearly destroying you.”

                The smile drops from her lips at his words, and he curses himself for a fool, because _why_ did he bring it up? 

                But instead of lashing out in anger or hurt, she gives her head a tiny, sad shake.

                “Do you plan to kill me?”

                The thought is so reprehensible to him that he rears back from her, his eyes flashing angrily.

                “Of course not!”

                And then he freezes, and she inclines her head slightly at him.  Because there is his answer.  Once, he had tried to kill her for crazed power.  And now?

                Now all he wants is to hold her.

                “It’s been 700 years, Klaus.  And I’m tired of missing you.”

                In response, Klaus kisses her again, this time unleashing all the hunger feels.  He feels her jump up, and catches her under her thighs.  It’s a stumbling journey, to get from the hall into her rooms.  But somehow, between kisses and curses, they make it, and tumbles her onto the bed.

                Her wings flare out behind her, and the sight of them makes him pause.  He runs his hands along them reverently, and she closes her eyes, lets them flex into his touch.

                “I love that you’re showing me a whole new, very loving side, Niklaus,” she grits out when he turns his hands from stroking her wings to stroking _her_.  “And I would very much like to explore it in the very near future… but I haven’t had sex for 700 years.  It’s been a _very_ long dry spell for me.”

                Her words make him freeze for a second, and her eyes flash open, spitting fire, and then the clothes begin to tear.

                She is hungry for the touch of skin on skin.

                _He’s_ simply hungry for her.

                He thrusts into her, and they both freeze, because _God_ , but it’s been too long.  She wraps her legs around his waist and clutches at his back, fingernails digging in as he begins to move again.  She moves with him, their motions growing frenzied as they grow closer and closer to the edge.

                She falls over on a scream that she muffles against his neck, but he doesn’t bother to try and silence his own shout.  He wants the world to hear it.  To know that she is _his_.

                They lie next to each other, panting hard, and he tugs her into his arms, nuzzling his nose into her hair and breathing in deep. 

                “I kept your territory for you,” she murmurs into his skin, and feels her press a kiss over his heart.

                “I know,” he replies.  “You’re brilliant.”

                There’s more, of course.  He will have to travel to his territory and see what’s changed, to remind the people that may have lost him to legend of what he is capable.  An Archangel cannot be weak, after all. And he’ll have to cut himself a new place in the Cadre.  He will not stay out of politics, and in times past their number has only ever been ten… but Klaus has no doubt that with Caroline at his side, he will change that.

                But for now, he holds her as she cuddles into him and falls into sleep.  Klaus has no desire to follow her, so instead he’ll simply watch over her.

                He’s slept long enough.

 

**Author's Note:**

> And here is the first part. If I follow my basic outline, I’m looking at 4-5 parts to this story. Let me know what you think.


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